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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



ECLECTIC ENGLISH CLASSICS 



CONCILIATION 



WITH THE 



AMERICAN COLONIES 



BY 

EDMUND 



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NEW YORK •:• CINCINNATI ♦:• CHICAGO 

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 
1896 



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Copyright, 1895, by 
American Book Company. 

BURKE ON CONCILIATION. 
M. I. 



INTRODUCTION. 



Edmund Burke was born in Dublin, probably on January 12, 
1729, though there is some dispute about this date. He passed 
his early school days in a town not far from his birthplace, under 
the tutorship of Abraham Shackleton, a Quaker schoolmaster of 
rare ability and moral worth, who had considerable influence in 
molding Burke's character. One characteristic which clung to 
him through life Burke manifested at an early age — when others 
were at play he was always at work. He entered Trinity Col- 
lege, Dublin, in 1743, and graduated in 1748. Much of his time 
at this period he spent in the libraries, gathering a store of useful 
information on many subjects which, later in life, proved to him a 
mine of intellectual wealth. 

Burke's father was a solicitor, and Edmund prepared to follow 
in his footsteps ; but, at the critical moment, his distaste for the 
law as a profession led him to abandon this career. He was, in 
fact, strongly attracted to literature, and he determined to adopt 
it as his calling. His father, indignant at this course, and an- 
gered at the overthrow of his most cherished plans, withdrew his 
allowance, and left his son to shift for himself in that most pre- 
carious of all callings. This was in 1755, and for the next year 
or so we hear little of Burke's doings. In 1756 he married Miss 

5 



6 INTRODUCTION. 

Nugent, the daughter of his physician, and in his married life he 
must have been peculiarly fortunate, for he tells us himself that 
every care vanished the moment he entered under his own roof. 
Just about this time he published anonymously his first book, " A 
Vindication of Natural Society," — a clever imitation of one of 
Lord Bolingbroke's works against Christianity. Burke's design 
was to prove the absurdity of Bolingbroke's arguments by show- 
ing that they applied with equal force to civilization, and that, if 
carried out to their logical conclusion, we must deduce that so- 
ciety is an evil, and the savage state the only one in which virtue 
and happiness are possible. But so closely was the satire veiled, 
and so perfect was the imitation of Bolingbroke's style, that many 
of the best critics of the day firmly believed that the "Vindication" 
came from the pen of Bolingbroke himself, and that the argu- 
ments and conclusions were written in all seriousness. When we 
reflect that Bolingbroke at this time stood at the very summit 
of fame as a master of style, we perceive that Burke had attained 
no mean insight into the arts of literary composition. A few 
months later he published an essay on " The Sublime and the 
Beautiful," which was received with much applause. Perhaps 
the greatest good that resulted to Burke from these writings was 
the acquaintance with his brother authors to which they led, and 
the admission they gave him to the literary clubs of the day. 

In 1759 Burke was engaged in collecting details of current 
events for a periodical called " The Annual Register." In this 
connection he became acquainted with men in public life, and 
among others with William Gerard Hamilton. In 1761 Hamil- 
ton went to Ireland as secretary to Lord Halifax, and Burke 
accompanied him. In 1763 Hamilton, who found Burke's ser- 
vices invaluable, procured him a pension of ^300 from the Irish 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

Treasury. When Burke found, however, that in return for this 
benefit Hamilton expected him to bind himself body and soul to 
his service and to cast aside all loftier aims, he threw up the 
pension and severed his connection with this narrow-minded 
man. Not long thereafter, in 1765, Lord Rockingham was ap- 
pointed prime minister, and Burke became his private secretary 
and, from that time on, his most loyal and devoted friend. 

Now began Burke's political career, and that rare opportunity 
for good to his country and to the world at large of which he so 
well availed himself. We shall trace that career here in the 
briefest compass, for we are concerned now only with its outcome 
in his political writings. 

He was returned in 1765 as a member of Parliament for the 
borough of Wendover, and in January, 1766, he made his opening 
speech, an argument favoring the petition sent to Parliament by 
the Stamp- Act Congress in America. " An Irishman, Mr. Burke, 
has sprung up in the House of Commons," said one of his con- 
temporaries, " who has astonished everybody with the power of 
his eloquence and his comprehensive knowledge in all our exterior 
and internal politics and commercial interests." He represented 
Wendover until 1774, when he was returned from Bristol, a city 
at that time second in importance only to London itself. He sat 
in Parliament as the representative of Bristol until 1780, and 
thereafter for the town of Malton, which he continued to repre- 
sent for the remainder of his parliamentary career. During this 
time his zeal for his country, and his love of virtue, justice, and 
good government showed themselves in a number of speeches 
which, by reason of their enduring literary qualities and the fire 
of eloquence which pervades them, are to-day regarded as 
classics. 



8 INTRODUCTION. 

These were troublous times in England as well as in Amer- 
ica. It may be that the conflict for American independence was 
bound to arise sooner or later, that no conciliation or concession 
on the part of England could have repressed that deep longing 
for unrestrained freedom which was made manifest during the war 
for American independence ; but the thing which above all others 
nourished the seed and fertilized the ground, and hastened the 
growth from a mere germ to its fullest development, was corrupt 
government in England. 

No one saw this more clearly than Burke, and no one more 
courageously raised the warning cry. In 1770 he wrote his 
" Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents," a master- 
piece in which he attempted to paint in clearest colors the evils 
that had attacked Parliament by the growth of royal influence. 

In 1774, 1775, and 1777 appeared his famous speeches on the 
American question — the " Speech on American Taxation," the 
" Speech on Conciliation with America," and the " Letter to the 
Sheriffs of Bristol." His keen foresight and indefatigable labors 
in search of truth enabled him to see the situation in its fullest 
light, and in all its bearings. Others there were who, through 
love of justice and humanity, favored a more generous policy on 
the part of England toward her colonies in America ; but none 
among the English saw so plainly as did he the outcome toward 
which the English spirit was tending. Not for a moment did 
he shrink from his duty. He knew the members of Parliament 
with whom he was dealing, and he knew that arguments based 
on sentiment or abstract ideas of right would have no force. He 
spoke out in plain words, and appealed to their reason and their 
own interest. " The question with me is not whether you have 
a right to render your people miserable, but whether it is not your 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

interest to make them happy." Had his hearers been less cor- 
rupt, had they been but a little less blinded by their personal in- 
terests in respect to the public welfare, these speeches must have 
had their desired effect. Burke labored unceasingly to root out 
this corruption and to reform English politics. In his " Speech 
on Economic Reform," in 1780, he gives us a clear insight into 
the evils existing at that time in the relations between the Court 
and the House of Commons. 

In return for all this disinterested service, and in recognition 
of his marvelous executive ability, we might well expect to see 
him filling one of the highest positions the government had to be- 
stow. And yet he was never admitted into the Cabinet, nor did 
he ever hold any office above the rather subordinate one of pay- 
master — not even when his own friends and the party which 
owed everything to his efforts and ability came into power. 
There have been many attempts to explain this omission by his 
poverty, by his Irish birth and family connections, and by his 
sympathies with the Roman Catholics at a time when they were 
scarcely tolerated; but none of these causes seem adequate to 
account for such flagrant neglect, and, in truth, the matter has 
never been explained. 

The Rockingham ministry had been dissolved in 1766, to be 
succeeded in turn by the ministries of Chatham and Grafton, and 
then by that of Lord North, who remained in power from 1770 
to 1782, and who was largely responsible for the stringent measures 
against America. With the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, 
Lord North's power came to an end, and Burke's friend, Lord 
Rockingham, once more became prime minister. He lived for 
only two months, and was succeeded in office by Lord Shelburne, 
who represented the Whig party and all the principles for which 



I o INTjR on UCTION. 

Burke had so strenuously fought. To be sure, Shelburne was 
personally objectionable to Burke; but that does not excuse the 
latter from withdrawing his allegiance, and, least of all, for lend- 
ing his support to Lord North — the man who, during his twelve 
years' previous ministry, had been responsible for many of the 
evils which Burke had done so much to reform. Lord North re- 
mained in powes only eight months, and with him Burke with- 
drew from his office of paymaster, never to return. 

He now devoted himself to a consideration of the English 
misrule in India — a question in which he had for some time 
manifested an active interest. The result of his study was given 
to the world in " The Nabob of Arcot's Debts," and the " Im- 
peachment of Warren Hastings." The trial of Warren Hastings, 
Governor General of India, for crimes and misdemeanors, dragged 
on for six weary years, and in the end he was acquitted; but 
Burke's eloquent exposure and denunciation of the evils in India 
were not delivered in vain; for although the man he accused 
was not condemned, the system he opposed received its death- 
blow. " If I were to call for a reward," Burke said, " it would 
be for the services in which for fourteen years I showed the most 
industry and had the least success. I mean the affairs in India. 
They are those on which I value myself the most — most for the 
importance; most for the labor; most for the judgment; most for 
the constancy and perseverance in the pursuit." 

We have now to consider the last period of Burke's life — 
that of the French Revolution. Burke was essentially conserva- 
tive. " What he valued was the deep-seated order of systems 
that worked by the accepted uses, opinions, beliefs, prejudices of 
a community." He watched with an ever-growing distrust the 
rise of those forces in France which were to destroy this order, 



IN TROD UCTION. 1 1 

and in the " Reflections on the Revolution in France," which 
appeared in November, 1790, he gave voice to his feelings in 
almost frenzied tones. For the first time in his life he did not 
study thoroughly the subject he had in hand. He saw but one 
side of the question; he wished to see no other. The dangers of 
the new system blinded him to the disorders of the old, and he 
had nothing but scorn and invective to hurl against the revolu- 
tionists ; not one word of sympathy for their wrongs or of excuse 
for their actions. The influence of this work was tremendous. 
"With a long resounding blast on his golden trumpet, Burke had 
unfurled a new flag, and half the nation hurried to rally to it — 
that half which had scouted his views on America, which had 
mocked his ideas on religious toleration, and which a moment 
before had hated and reviled him beyond all men living for his 
fierce tenacity in the impeachment of Warren Hastings." 

Burke's attitude brought him much honor, but still more humili- 
ation. The crowned heads of Europe applauded him, but his 
friends one by one dropped away. The climax came when he 
renounced the friendship of his lifelong companion, Charles Fox, 
because the latter could not follow him in his bitter denuncia- 
tion of the French. This was in 1791. In August of the same 
year he wrote an " Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs," in 
which he tried to defend his views on the French Revolution, and 
to vindicate himself against the charge of having renounced his 
most avowed principles. From this time on he devoted himself 
to the French situation, and he went so far as to urge the English 
to interfere and wage war with France. 

In 1794 Burke retired altogether from Parliament. The king 
and the Tories, well pleased at his attitude toward the French, 
were making arrangements to elevate him to the peerage when, 



1 2 1NTR0D UCTION. 

in August, 1794, he was completely prostrated by the sudden death 
of his son Richard, to whom he was deeply attached. 

The question of the peerage was dropped, but the king, in re- 
turn for his long years of service, granted him a pension. As 
this pension had not been sanctioned by Parliament, the Duke of 
Bedford assailed it on the plea of corruption. In his " Letter 10 
a Noble Lord," Burke repudiated this charge and showed how 
well he had earned this slight reward for long political services. 

In 1795 he wrote his " Letters on a Regicide Peace," which, 
like all his writings of this period, are marked by his undying 
horror and hatred of the spirit of the French Revolution. After 
the death of his son he had little interest left in life, and he 
followed him to the grave on July 9, 1797. 

And now we must consider what it was in Burke, that raised 
him from obscurity to a position whence he influenced the whole 
of Europe; what it was that ranked him among orators with 
Demosthenes and Cicero, among statesmen with Richelieu and 
Pitt, and among philosophical thinkers and eloquent writers with 
the greatest men of his time and of all time. The answer is 
ready at hand. To great breadth of intellect he added a strong 
will and a determination to gain a thorough knowledge of every 
subject within his range. He worked indefatigably, and his 
versatility was truly marvelous. It was difficult to find a subject 
in which he was not as much at home as though it had been his 
specialty. Add to these qualities a strong moral character, which 
led him to unwearied work in the cause of right and virtue, as he 
conceived it, and we have the elements of all true success. 

He had no personal charms to recommend him; his gestures 
were awkward, his voice harsh, and his utterance displeasing. 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

We are even told that one of his listeners crept under a bench 
to escape a speech which, when published, he read till it was 
thumbed to rags. "I was not/' Burke tells us himself, "swaddled 
and rocked and dandled into a legislator. I possessed not one 
of the qualities, nor cultivated one of the arts, that recommend 
men to the favor and protection of the great. I was not made 
for a minion or a tool. As little did I follow the trade of win- 
ning the hearts by imposing on the understandings of the people. 
At every step of my progress in life, — for in every step was I 
traversed and opposed, — and at every turnpike I met, I was 
obliged to show my passport, and again and again to prove my 
sole title to the honor of being useful to my country, by a proof 
that I was not wholly unacquainted with its laws and the whole 
system of its interests both abroad and at home ; otherwise no 
rank, no toleration even, for me." 

And so, inch by inch, he raised himself to the very pinnacle 
of fame. " No man of sense," said Dr. Johnson, " could meet 
Mr. Burke by accident under a gateway without being convinced 
that he was the first man in England." 

The following characterization is taken from John Morley's 
excellent " Life of Burke ": " Opinion is slowly, but without re- 
action, settling down to the verdict that Burke is one of the 
abiding names in our history, not because he either saved Europe 
or destroyed the Whig party; but because he added to the per- 
manent considerations of wise political thought, and to the max- 
ims of wise practice in great affairs, and because he imprints him- 
self upon us with a magnificence and elevation of expression, 
that places him among the highest masters of literature, in one 
of its highest and most commanding senses His pas- 
sion appears hopelessly fatal to success in the pursuit of Truth, 



14 INTRODUCTION. 

who does not usually reveal herself to followers thus inflamed. 
His ornate style appears fatal to the cautious and precise method 
of statement suitable to matter which is not known at all unless 
it is known distinctly. Yet the natural ardor which impelled 
Burke to clothe his judgments in glowing and exaggerated 
phrases, is one secret of his power over us, because it kindles in 
those who are capable of that generous infection a respondent 
interest and sympathy. But more than this, the reader is speedily 
conscious of the precedence in Burke of the facts of morality and 
conduct, of the many interwoven affinities of human affection and 
historical relation, over the unreal necessities of mere abstract 
logic. Burke's mind was full of the matter of great truths, copi- 
ously enriched from the fountain of generous and many-colored 
feeling. He thought about life as a whole, with all its infirmities 
and all its pomps. With none of the mental exclusiveness of the 
moralist by profession, he fills every page with solemn reference 
and meaning ; with none of the mechanical bustle of the common 
politician, he is everywhere conscious of the mastery of laws, in- 
stitutions, and government over the character and happiness of 
men. Besides thus diffusing a strong light over the awful tides 
of human circumstance, Burke has the sacred gift of inspiring 
men to use a grave diligence in caring for high things, and in 
making their lives at once rich and austere. Such a part in liter- 
ature is indeed high And we do not dissent when 

Macaulay, after reading Burke's works over again, exclaims, 
' How admirable ! The greatest man since Milton ! ' " 

We, as Americans, owe to Edmund Burke a special debt of 
gratitude for his zeal and labors in our cause, and for the three 
speeches that should be placed on our shelves, side by side with 
those of our own great political writers. 



IN TROD UCTION. 1 5 

To quote Mr. Morley once more : " Of all Burke's writings 
none are so fit to secure unqualified and unanimous admiration 
as the three pieces on this momentous struggle : the ' Speech on 
American Taxation' (April 19, 1774); the ' Speech on Concili- 
ation with America'" (March 22, 1775); and the 'Letter to the 

Sheriffs of Bristol' (1777) It is no exaggeration to 

say that they compose the most perfect manual in our literature, 
or in any literature, for one who approaches the study of public 
affairs, whether for knowledge or for practice. They are an ex- 
ample without fault of all the qualities which the critic, whether 
a theorist or an actor, of great political situations should strive 
by night and by day to possess. If the subject with which they 
deal were less near than it is to our interests and affections as free 
citizens, these three performances would still abound in the les- 
sons of an incomparable political method. We should still have 
everything to learn from the author's treatment; the vigorous 
grasp of masses of compressed detail, the wide illumination from 
great principles of human experience, the strong and masculine 
feeling for the two great political ends of Justice and Freedom, 
the large and generous interpretation of expediency, the morality, 
the vision, the noble temper. If ever in the fullness of time, — 
and surely the fates of men and literature cannot have it other- 
wise, — Burke becomes one of the half-dozen names of established 
and universal currency in education and in common books, rising 
above the waywardness of literary caprice or intellectual fashions, 
as Shakespeare and Milton and Bacon rise above it, it will be the 
mastery, the elevation, the wisdom, of these far shining discourses 
in which the world will, in an especial degree, recognize the com- 
bination of sovereign gifts with beneficent uses." 



CONCILIATION WITH THE 
AMERICAN COLONIES. 1 



I HOPE, Sir, that, notwithstanding the austerity of the Chair, 
your good nature will incline you to some degree of indulgence 
towards human frailty. You will not think it unnatural, that those 
who have an object depending, which strongly engages their 
hopes and fears, should be somewhat inclined to superstition. As 
I came into the House full of anxiety about the event of my 
motion, I found, to my infinite surprise, that the grand penal bill, 
by which we had passed sentence on the trade and sustenance of 
America, is to be returned to us from the other House. 2 I do 
confess, I could not help looking on this event as a fortunate 
omen. I look upon it as a sort of providential favor; by which 
we are put once more in possession of our deliberative capacity, 
upon a business so very questionable in its nature, so \ery uncer- 
tain in its issue. By the return of this bill, which seemed to have 

1 This speech was delivered by Edmund Burke in the House of Com- 
mons, March 22, 1775, on moving his resolutions for conciliation with the 
colonies. 

2 House of Lords. A few weeks previous, Lord North, at that time 
Prime Minister of England, had proposed an act to restrain the trade and 
commerce of the provinces of Massachusetts Bay and New Hampshire, the 
colonies of Connecticut and Rhode Island, and Providence Plantation, in 
North America, to Great Britain, Ireland, and the British Islands in the 
West Indies ; and to prohibit such provinces and colonies from carrying on 
any fishery on the banks of Newfoundland, and other places therein men- 
tioned, under certain conditions and limitations. Burke had spoken with 
great indignation against the injustice of this bill. 

2 17 



1 8 EDMUND BURKE ON CONCILIATION 

taken its flight forever, we are, at this very instant, nearly as free 
to choose a plan for our American government as we were on the 
first day of the session. If, Sir, we incline to the side of concilia- 
tion, we are not at all embarrassed (unless we please to make 
ourselves so) by any incongruous mixture of coercion and re- 
straint. We are therefore called upon, as it were by a superior 
warning voice, again to attend to America; to attend to the 
whole of it together ; and to review the subject with an unusual 
degree of care and calmness. 

Surely it is an awful subject ; or there is none so on this side of 
the grave. When I first had the honor of a seat in this House, 
the affairs of that continent pressed themselves upon us, as the 
most important and most delicate object of parliamentary atten- 
tion. My little share in this great deliberation oppressed me. I 
found myself a partaker in a very high trust ; and having no sort 
of reason to rely on the strength of my natural abilities for the 
proper execution of that trust, I was obliged to take more than 
common pains to instruct myself in everything which relates to 
our colonies. I was not less under the necessity of forming some 
fixed ideas concerning the general policy of the British empire. 
Something of this sort seemed to be indispensable, in order, 
amidst so vast a fluctuation of passions and opinions, to concenter 
my thoughts, to ballast my conduct, to preserve me from being 
blown about by every wind of fashionable doctrine. I really did 
not think It safe, or manly, to have fresh principles to seek upon 
every fresh mail which should arrive from America. 
rt At that period * I had the fortune to find myself in perfect con- 
y' currence with a large majority in this House. Bowing under that 
high authority, and penetrated with the sharpness and strength of 
that early impression, I have continued ever since, without the 
least deviation, in my original sentiments. Whether this be owing 
to an obstinate perseverance in error, or to a religious adherence 
to w T hat appears to me truth and reason, it is in your equity 
to judge. 

Sir, Parliament having an enlarged view of objects, made, during 

1 The time of the repeal of the Stamp Act. 



1 



WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 19 

this interval, more frequent changes in their sentiments and their 
conduct, than could be justified in a particular person upon the 
contracted scale of private information. But though I do not 
hazard anything approaching to censure on the motives of former 
Parliaments to all those alterations, one fact is undoubted — that 
under them the state of America has been kept in continual 
agitation. Everything administered as remedy to the public 
complaint, if it did not produce, was at least followed by, an 
heightening of the distemper; until, by a variety of experiments, 
that important country has been brought into her present situation 
— a situation which I will not miscall, which I dare not name, 
which I scarcely know how to comprehend in the terms of any 
description. 

f) In this posture, Sir, things stood at the beginning of the session. 
About that time, a worthy member * of great parliamentary experi- 
ence, who, in the year 1766, filled the chair of the American 
Committee with much ability, took me aside ; and, lamenting the 
present aspect of our politics, told me things were come to such a 
pass that our former methods of proceeding in the House would 
be no longer tolerated. That the public tribunal (never too 
indulgent to a long and unsuccessful opposition) would now 
scrutinize our conduct with unusual severity. That the very 
vicissitudes and shiftings of ministerial measures, instead of con- 
victing their authors of inconstancy and want of system, would 
be taken as an occasion of charging us with a predetermined dis- 
content which nothing could satisfy, whilst we accused every 
measure of vigor as cruel, and every proposal of lenity as weak 
and irresolute. The public, he said, would not have patience to 
see us play the game out with our adversaries : we must produce 
our hand. It would be expected that those, who for many years 
had been active in such affairs, should show that they had formed 
some clear and decided idea of the principles of colony govern- 
ment ; and were capable of drawing out something like a platform 
of the ground, which might be laid for future and permanent 
tranquillity. 

l Mr. Rose Fuller. 



20 EDMUND BURKE ON CONCILIATION 



til 



I felt the truth of what my honorable friend represented ; but 
felt my situation too. His application might have been made 
with far greater propriety to many other gentlemen. No man 
was indeed ever better disposed, or worse qualified, for such an 
undertaking than myself. Though I gave so far into his opinion 
that I immediately threw my thoughts into a sort of parliamen- 
tary form, I was by no means equally ready to produce them. 
It generally argues some degree of natural impotence of mind, or 
some want of knowledge of the world, to hazard plans of govern- 
ment except from a seat of authority. Propositions are made, not 
only ineffectually, but somewhat disreputably, when the minds 
of men are not properly disposed for their reception; and for my 
part, I am not ambitious of ridicule, not absolutely a candidate 
for disgrace. 

O Besides, Sir, to speak the plain truth, I have in general no very 
exalted opinion of the virtue of paper government, 1 nor of any 
politics in which the plan is to be wholly separated from the exe- 
cution. But when I saw that anger and violence prevailed every 
day more and more, and that things were hastening toward an 
incurable alienation of our colonies, 1 confess my caution gave 
way. I felt this as one of those few moments in which decorum 
yields to a higher duty. Public calamity is a mighty leveler; and 
there are occasions when any, even the slightest, chance of doing 
good must be laid hold on, even by the most inconsiderable person. 

To restore order and repose to an empire so great and so dis- 
tracted as ours, is, merely in the attempt, an undertaking that 
would ennoble the flights of the highest genius, and obtain pardon 
for the efforts of the meanest understanding. Struggling a good 
while with these thoughts, by degrees I felt myself more firm. I 
derived, at length, some confidence from what in other circum- 
stances usually produces timidity. I grew less anxious, even from 
the idea of my own insignificance. For, judging of what you are 
by what you ought to be, I persuaded myself that you would not 
reject a reasonable proposition because it had nothing but its 

1 "Paper government," i.e., measures proposed in a bill, but not yet 
carried out. 



WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 2 I 

reason to recommend it. On the other hand, being totally desti- 
tute of all shadow of influence, natural or adventitious, I was very 
sure that, if my proposition were futile or dangerous, if it were 
weakly conceived, or improperly timed, there was nothing exterior 
to it of power to awe, dazzle, or delude you. You will see it 
juskas it is; and you will treat it just as it deserves. 
< <-■•/& he proposition is. peace. Not peace through the medium of 
^war; not peace to be hunted through the labyrinth of intricate 
and endless negotiations ; not peace to arise out of universal dis- 
cord, fomented from principle, in all parts of the empire; not 
peace to depend on the juridical determination of perplexing 
questions, or the precise marking of the shadowy boundaries of a 
complex government. It is simple peace, sought in its natural 
course, and in its ordinary haunts. It is peace sought in the 
spirit of peace, and laid in principles purely pacific7| I propose, 
by removing the ground of the difference, and by restoring the 
farmer unsuspecting confide7ice of the colonies in I he mother country, 
to give permanent satisfaction to your people, and (far from a 
scheme of ruling by discord) to reconcile them to each other in 
the same act and by the bond of the very same interest which 
reconciles them to British government. 

/ ) My idea is nothing more. Refined policy ever has been the 
parent of confusion; and ever will be so, as long as the world en- 
dures. Plain good intention, which is as easily discovered at the 
first view as fraud is surely detected at last, is, let me say, of no 
mean force in the government of mankind. Genuine simplicity 
of heart is a healing and cementing principle. My plan, there- 
fore, being formed upon the most simple grounds imaginable, 
may disappoint some people when they hear it. It has nothing 
to recommend it to the pruriency 1 of curious ears. There is 
nothing at all new and captivating in it It has nothing of the 
splendor of the project which has been lately laid upon your 
table by the noble lord in the blue ribbon. 2 It does not propose 

1 Eager desire. 

2 The blue ribbon was the badge of the Order of the Garter. The refer- 
ence here is to Lord North, who had been made a knight of the Garter. He 



EDMUND BURKE ON CONCILIATION 



to fill your lobby with squabbling colony agents, who will require 
the interposition of your mace, 1 at every instant, to keep the peace 
amongst them. It does not institute a magnificent auction of 
finance, where captivated provinces come to general ransom by 
bidding against each other, until you knock down the hammer, 
and determine a proportion of payments beyond all the powers 
of algebra to equalize and settle. 

The plan which I shall presume to suggest, derives, however, 
one great advantage from the proposition and registry of that no- 
ble lord's project. The idea of conciliation is admissible, First, 
the House, in accepting the resolution moved by the noble lord, 
has admitted, notwithstanding the menacing front of our address, 
notwithstanding our heavy bill of pains and penalties, that we 
do not tliink ourselves precluded from all ideas of free grace and 
bounty. 

The House has gone further; it has declared conciliation ad- 
missible, previous to any submission on the part of America. It 
has even shot a good deal beyond that mark, and has admitted 
that the complaints of our former mode of exerting the right of 
taxation were not wholly unfounded. That right thus exerted is 
allowed to have had something reprehensible in it — something 
unwise, or something grievous; since, in the midst of our heat 
and resentment, we, of ourselves, have proposed a capital altera- 
tion, and, in order to get rid of what seemed so very exception- 
able, have instituted a mode that is altogether new — one that is, 
indeed, wholly alien from all the ancient methods and forms of 
Parliament. 

The principle of this proceeding is large enough for my purpose. 
The means proposed by the noble lord for carrying his ideas into 
execution, I think, indeed, are very indifferently suited to the end; 
and this I shall endeavor to show you before I sit down. But, for 

had introduced a bill proposing that any province or colony which should 
make provision for their common defense should be exempt from taxation. 
This offer was rejected by the colonies. 

1 The emblem of authority lying on the Speaker's table ; hence, the ser- 
geant-at-arms of the House. 



WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 23 

the present, T take my ground on the admitted principle. I mean 
to give peace. Peace implies reconciliation; and, where there 
has been a material dispute, reconciliation does in a manner al- 
ways imply concession on the one part or on the other. In this 
state of things, I make no difficulty in affirming that the proposal 
ought to originate from us. Great and acknowledged force is not 
impaired, either in effect or in opinion, by an unwillingness to ex- 
ert itself. The superior power may offer peace with honor and 
with safety. Such an offer from such a power will be attributed 
to magnanimity. But the concessions of the weak are the con- 
cessions of fear. When such a one is disarmed, he is wholly at 
the mercy of his superior ; and he loses forever that time and those 
chances, which, as they happen to all men, are the strength and 
resources of all inferior power. 

The capital leading questions on which you must this day de- 
cide, are these two : first, whether you ought to concede ; and 
secondly, what your concession ought to be. On the first of 
these questions we have gained (as I have just taken the liberty 
of observing to you) some ground. But I am sensible that a 
good deal more is still to be done. Indeed, Sir, to enable us to 
determine both on the one and the other of these great questions 
with a firm and precise judgment, I think it may be necessary to 
consider distinctly the true nature and the peculiar circumstances 
of the object which we have before us. I Because, after all our 
struggle, whether we will or not, we must govern America accord- 
ing to that nature, and to those circumstances ; and not according 
to our own imaginations ; nor according to abstract ideas of right ; 
by no means according to mere general theories of government, 
the resort to which appears to me, in our present situation, no 
better than arrant trifling. k I shall therefore endeavor, with your 
leave, to lay before you some of the most material of these cir- 
cumstances in as full and as clear a manner as I am able to state 
them. 

j The first thing that we have to consider with regard to the na- 
ture of the object is — the number of people in the colonies. I 
have taken for some years a good deal of pains on that point. I 



24 EDMUND BURKE ON CONCILIATION 

can by no calculation justify myself in placing the number below 
two millions of inhabitants of our own European blood and color; 
besides at least 500,000 others, who form no inconsiderable part 
of the strength and opulence of the whole. This, Sir, is, I believe, 
about the true number. There is no occasion to exaggerate, 
where plain truth is of so much weight and importance. But 
whether I put the present numbers too high or too low is a mat- 
ter of little moment. Such is the strength with which popula- 
tion shoots in that part of the world, that, state the numbers as 
high as we will, whilst the dispute continues, the exaggeration 
ends. Whilst we are discussing any given magnitude, they are 
grown to it. Whilst we spend our time in deliberating on the 
mode of governing two millions, we shall find we have millions 
more to manage. Your children do not grow faster from infancy 
to manhood, than they spread from families to communities, and 
from villages to nations. 

^ I put this consideration of the present and the growing num- 
bers in the front of our deliberation ; because, Sir, this consideration 
will make it evident to a blunter discernment than yours, that no 
partial, narrow, contracted, pinched, occasional system will be at 
all suitable to such an object. It will show you that it is not to 
be considered as one of those minima x which are out of the eye 
and consideration of the law ; not a paltry excrescence of the 
state ; not a mean dependent, who may be neglected with little 
damage and provoked with little danger. It will prove that 
some degree of care and caution is required in the handling such 
an object; it will show that you ought not, in reason, to trifle with 
so large a mass of the interests and feelings of the human raceV 
You could at no time do so without guilt; and be assured you will 
not be able to do it long with impunity. 

] But the population of this country, — the great and growing pop- 
ulation, — - though a very important consideration, will lose much 
of its weight if not combined with other circumstances. The com- 
merce of your colonies is out of all proportion beyond the num- 

1 Plural of the Latin adjective minimum, meaning " of the smallest possi- 
ble amount"; hence, matters of no consequence; trifles. 



WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 25 

bers of the people. This ground of their commerce indeed has 
been trod some days ago, and with great ability, by a distin- 
guished person, ] at your bar. This gentleman, after thirty-five 
years, — it is so long since he first appeared at the same place to 
plead for the commerce of Great Britain, — has come again before 
you to plead the same cause, without any other effect of time, 
than that, to the fire of imagination and extent of erudition which 
even then marked him as one of the first literary characters of his 
age, he has added a consummate knowledge in the commercial 
interest of his country, formed by a long course of enlightened 
and discriminating experience. 

[■ S Sir, I should be inexcusable in coming after such a person with 
"any detail, if a great part of the members who now fill the House 
had not the misfortune to be absent when he appeared at your 
bar. Besides, Sir, I propose to take the matter at periods of time 
somewhat different from his. There is, if I mistake not, a point 
of view, from whence if you will look at this subject, it is impossi- 

- ble that it should not make an impression upon you. 

f I have in my hand two accounts : one a comparative state 2 of 
the export trade of England to its colonies, as it stood in the year 
1704, and as it stood in the year 1772; the other a state of the 
export trade of this country to its colonies alone, as it stood in 
1772, compared with the whole trade of England to all parts of 
the world (the colonies included) in the year 1704. They are 
from good vouchers ; the latter period from the accounts on your 
table, the earlier from an original manuscript of Davenant, who 
first established the inspector-general's office, which has been ever 
since his time so abundant a source of parliamentary information. 
5 The export trade to the colonies consists of three great 

P branches. The African, which, terminating almost wholly in the 
colonies, must be put to the account of their commerce; the 
West Indian ; and the North American. All these are so inter- 
woven that the attempt to separate them would tear to pieces the 

1 A Mr. Glover, who had appeared before the House in a plea for peace 
with the colonies. 

2 Statement. 



/~ 



2 6 EDMUND BURKE ON CONCILIATION 

contexture of the whole, and if not entirely destroy, would very 
much depreciate the value of all the parts. I therefore consider 
these three denominations to be, what in effect they are, one trade. 
9 /The trade to the colonies, taken on the export side, at the 
beginning of this century, that is, in the year 1704, stood thus: 

Exports to North America and the West Indies . . ^483,265 
To Africa 86,665 

^569,930 

^In the year 1772, which I take as a middle year between the 
highest and lowest of those lately laid on your table, the account 
was as follows : 

To North America and the West Indies / £4>79 I ;734 

To Africa 866,398 

To which if you add the export trade from Scot- 
land, which had in 1704 no existence 364.000 

^6,022,132 

> From five hundred and odd thousand, it has grown to six 
millions. It has increased no less than twelve-fold. This is the 
state of the colony trade, as compared with itself at these two 
periods within this century; and this is a matter for meditation. 
But this is not all. Examine my second account. See how the 
export trade to the colonies alone in 1772 stood in the other point 
of view, that is, as compared to the whole trade of England 
in 1704. 

The whole export trade of England, including 

that to the colonies, in 1704 .£6,509,000 

Export to the colonies alone, in 1772 6,024,000 

Difference £ 485,000 

1 The trade with America alone is now within less than ^500,000 
of being equal to what this great commercial nation, England, 
carried on at the beginning of this century with the whole world ! 
If I had taken the largest year of those on your table, it would 



WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 27 

rather have exceeded. But, it will be said, is not this American 
trade an unnatural protuberance, that has drawn the juices from 
the rest of the body ? The reverse. It is the very food that has 
nourished every other part into its present magnitude. Our 
general trade has been greatly augmented, and augmented more 
or less in almost every part to which it ever extended; but with 
this material difference, that of the six millions which in the 
beginning of the century constituted the whole mass of our 
export commerce, the colony trade was but one-twelfth part ; it 
is now (as a part of sixteen millions) considerably more than a 
third of the whole. This is the relative proportion of the impor- 
tance of the colonies at these two periods; and all reasoning 
concerning our mode of treating them must have this proportion 
as its basis, or it is a reasoning weak, rotten, and sophistical. 
a L Mr. Speaker, I cannot prevail on myself to hurry over this great 
•consideration. It is good for us to be here. We stand where we 
have an immense view of what is, and what is past. Clouds, 
indeed, and darkness rest upon the future. Let us, however, 
before we descend from this noble eminence, reflect that this 
growth of our national prosperity has happened within the short 
period of the life of man. It has happened within sixty-eight 
years. There are those alive whose memory might touch the two 
extremities. For instance, my Lord Bathurst might remember all 
the stages of the progress. He was in 1704 of an age at least to 
be made to comprehend such things. He was then old enough 
acta parentum jam Zegere, et quce sit poterit cognoscere vii'tus?- 
Suppose, Sir, that the angel of this auspicious youth, foreseeing 
the many virtues which made him one of the most amiable, as he 
is one of the most fortunate, men of his age, had opened to him 
in vision, that when, in the fourth generation, the third prince 2 of 
the House of Brunswick had sat twelve years on the throne of that 
nation, which (by the happy issue of moderate and healing coun- 

1 " To read the achievements of his fathers, and be able to understand what 
virtue is." See Vergil, Eclogue iv. 

2 The reference here is to George III., who was King of England at the 
time of the delivery of this speech. 



2 8 EDMUND BURKE ON CONCILIATION 

cils) was to be made Great Britain, 1 he should see his son, Lord 
Chancellor of England, turn back the current of hereditary 
dignity to its fountain, and raise him to a higher rank of peerage, 
whilst he enriched the family with a new one. If amidst these 
bright and happy scenes of domestic honor and prosperity, that 
angel should have drawn up the curtain, and unfolded the rising 
glories of his country, and whilst he was gazing with admiration 
on the then commercial grandeur of England, the genius should 
point out to him a little speck, scarce visible in the mass of the 
national interest, a small seminal principle, 2 rather than a formed 
body, and should tell him : " Young man, there is America, 
which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with 
stories of savage men and uncouth manners, yet shall, before you 
taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce 
which now attracts the envy of the world. Whatever England 
has been growing to by a progressive increase of improvement, 
brought in by varieties of people, by succession of civilizing con- 
quests and civilizing settlements in a series of seventeen hundred 
years, you shall see as much added to her by America in the 
course of a single life! " — if this state of. his country had been 
foretold to him, would it not require all the sanguine credulity of 
youth, and all the fervid glow of enthusiasm, to make him believe 
it ? Fortunate man, he has lived to see it ! Fortunate indeed, if 
he lives to see nothing that shall vary the prospect, and cloud the 
setting of his day ! 
* \jp Excuse me, Sir, if, turning from such thoughts, I resume this 
comparative view once more. You have seen it on a large scale ; 
look at it on a small one. I will point out to your attention a 
particular instance of it in the single province of Pennsylvania. 
In the year 1704, that province called for £11,459 in value of 
your commodities, native and foreign. This was the whole. 
What did it demand in 1772 ? Why, nearly fifty times as much ; 
for in that year the export to Pennsylvania was ,£507,909, nearly 

1 The name of Great Britain was not formally used to indicate the kingdom 
until after the union of the Scottish and English Parliaments in 1707. 

2 " Seminal principle," i.e., germ. 



WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 29 

equal to the export to all the colonies together in the first 
period. 

^I choose, Sir, to enter into these minute and particular details ; 
ecause generalities, which in all other cases are apt to heighten 
and raise the subject, have here a tendency to sink it. When we 
speak of the commerce with our colonies, fiction lags after truth, 
invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren. 
■ So far, Sir, as to the importance of the object in view of its 



oommerce, as concerned in the exports from England. If I were 
to detail the imports, I could show how many enjoyments they 
procure which deceive the burthen x of life ; how many materials 
which invigorate the springs of national industry, and extend and 
animate every part of our foreign and domestic commerce. This 
would be a curious subject indeed — but I must prescribe bounds 
to myself in a matter so vast and various. 
/,4 I pass, therefore, to the colonies in another point of view — their 
agriculture. This they have prosecuted with such a spirit, that, 
besides feeding plentifully their own growing multitude, their an- 
nual export of grain, comprehending rice, has some years ago ex- 
ceeded a million in value. Of their last harvest, I am persuaded 
they will export much more. At the beginning of the century 
some of these colonies imported com from their mother country. 

For some time past, the Old World has been fed from the New. 
The scarcity which you have felt would have been a desolating 
famine, if this child of your old age, with a true filial piety, with 
a Roman charity, had not put the full breast of its youthful 
exuberance to the mouth of its exhausted parent. 2 

As to the wealth which the colonies have drawn from the sea 
by their fisheries, you had all that matter fully opened at your 
bar. You surely thought these acquisitions of value, for they 
seemed even to excite your envy; and yet the spirit by which 
that enterprising employment has been exercised, ought rather, in 

1 Old form of "burden." 

2 An allusion to the story of a Roman girl who, when her father was im- 
prisoned and left to starve, obtained entrance to his cell, and nourished him 
from her own breast. 



30 EDMUND BURKE ON C0NCILL4TI0N 

my opinion, to have raised your esteem and admiration. And 
pray, Sir, what in the world is equal to it? Pass by the other 
parts, and look at the manner in which the people of New Eng- 
land have of late carried on the whale fishery. Whilst we fol- 
low them among the tumbling mountains of ice, and behold them 
penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson Bay and 
Davis Straits, whilst we are looking for them beneath the arctic 
circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of 
polar cold, that they are at the antipodes, and engaged under the 
frozen serpent 1 of the south. Falkland Island, 2 which seemed too 
remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition, 
is but a stage and resting place in the progress of their victorious 
industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them 
than the accumulated winter of both the poles. We know that 
whilst some of them draw the line and strike the harpoon on the 
coast of Africa, others run the longitude, and pursue their gigantic 
game along the coast of Brazil. No sea but what is vexed by 
their fisheries! No climate that is not witness to their toils! 
Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, 
nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise, ever 
carried this most perilous mode of hard industry to the extent to 
which it has been pushed by this recent people — a people who 
are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into 
the bone of manhood. When I contemplate these things; when 
I know that the colonies in general owe little or nothing to any 
care of ours, and that they are not squeezed into this happy form 
by the constraints of watchful and suspicious government — but 
that, through a wise and salutary neglect, a generous nature has 
been suffered to take her own way to perfection : when I reflect 
upon these effects, when I see how profitable they have been to 
us, I feel all the pride of power sink, and all presumption in the 
wisdom of human contrivances melt and die away within me. 
My rigor relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty. 

1 A constellation seen within the antarctic circle. 

2 The largest of a group of islands off the southeast coast of South America, 
belonging to Great Britain. 



WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 31 

? ' I am sensible, Sir, that all which I have asserted in my detail, 
is admitted in the gross ; but that quite a different conclusion is 
drawn from it. America, gentlemen say, is a noble object. It is 
an object well worth fighting for. Certainly it is, if fighting a 
people be the best way of gaining them. Gentlemen in this re- 
spect will be led to their choice of means by their complexions 
and their habits. Those who understand the military art will, of 
course, have some predilection for it. Those who wield the 
thunder of the state, may have more confidence in the efficacy of 
arms. But I confess, possibly for want of this knowledge, my 
opinion is much more in favor of prudent management, than 
of force ; considering force not as an odious, but a feeble, instru- 
ment, for preserving a people so numerous, so active, so growing, 
so spirited as this, in a profitable and subordinate connection 
with us. 

., 1 First, Sir, permit me to observe, that the use of force alone is 
' but temporary. It may subdue for a moment ; but it does not 
remove the necessity of subduing again: and a nation is not 
governed, which is perpetually to be conquered. 

s/j My next objection is its uncertainty. Terror is not always the 

"' effect of force ; and an armament is not a victory. If you do not 
succeed, you are without resource ; for, conciliation failing, force 
remains; but, force failing, no further hope of reconciliation is 
left. Power and authority are sometimes bought by kindness; 
but they can never be begged as alms by an impoverished and 
defeated violence. 

A further objection to force is, that you impair the object by 
our very endeavors to preserve it. The thing you fought for is 
not the thing which you recover — but depreciated, sunk, wasted, 
and consumed in the contest. Nothing less will content me. 
than whole America. I do not choose to consume its strength 
along with our own ; because in all parts it is the British strength 
that I consume. I do not choose to be caught by a foreign 
enemy at the end of this exhausting conflict ; and still less in the 
midst of it. I may escape ; but I can make no insurance against 
such an event. Let me add, that I do not choose wholly to 



cie 
y yo 



3^ EDMUND BURKE ON CONCILIATION 

break the American spirit; because it is the spirit that has made 
tlje country. 
I J Lastly, we have no sort of experience in favor of force as an in- 
strument in the rule of our colonies. Their growth and their 
utility has been owing to methods altogether different. Our 
ancient indulgence has been said to be pursued to a fault. It 
may be so. But we know, if feeling is evidence, that our fault 
is more tolerable than our attempt to mend it; and our sin far 
more salutary than our penitence. 

; These, Sir, are my reasons for not entertaining that high opin- 
ion of untried force, by which many gentlemen, for whose senti- 
ments in other particulars I have great respect, seem to be so 
greatly captivated. But there is still behind a third consideration 
concerning this object, which serves to determine my opinion on 
the sort of policy which ought to be pursued in the management 
of America, even more than its population and its commerce. 
I mean its temper and character. 
o^] In this character of the Americans, a love of freedom is the 
predominating feature which marks and distinguishes the whole ; 
and as an ardent is always a jealous affection, your colonies be- 
come suspicious, restive, and un tractable, whenever they see the 
least attempt to wrest from them by force, or shuffle from them 
by chicane, what they think the only advantage worth living for. 
This fierce - spirit of liberty is stronger in the English colonies, 
probably, than in any other people of the earth ; and this from a 
great variety of powerful causes, which, to understand the true 
temper of their minds, and the direction which this spirit takes, it 
will not be amiss to lay open somewhat more largely. 

First, the people of the colonies are descendants of English- 
men. England, Sir, is a nation which still, I hope, respects, and 
formerly adored, her freedom. The colonists emigrated from you 
when this part of your character was most predominant; and 
they took this bias and direction the moment they parted from 
your hands. They are therefore not only devoted to liberty, but 
to liberty according to English ideas, and on English principles. 
Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found. 



WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 33 

Liberty inheres in some sensible object; and every nation has 
formed to itself some favorite point which, by way of eminence, 
becomes the criterion of their happiness. It happened, you 
know, Sir, that the great contests for freedom in this country 
were from the earliest times chiefly upon the question of taxing. 
Most of the contests in the ancient commonwealths turned pri- 
marily on the right of election of magistrates, or on the balance 
among the several orders of the state. The question of money 
was not with them so immediate. But in England it was other- 
wise. On this point of taxes the ablest pens and most eloquent 
tongues have been exercised, the greatest spirits have acted and 
suffered. In order to give the fullest satisfaction concerning the 
importance of this point, it was not only necessary for those, who 
in argument defended the excellence of the English constitution, 
to insist on this privilege of granting money as a dry point of 
fact, and to prove that the right had been acknowledged in 
ancient parchments and blind usages to reside in a certain body 
called a House of Commons. They went much farther; they 
attempted to prove, and they succeeded, that in theory it ought 
to be so, from the particular nature of a House of Commons as 
an immediate representative of the people, whether the old rec- 
ords had delivered this oracle or not. They took infinite pains 
to inculcate, as a fundamental principle, that in all monarchies 
the people must in effect themselves, mediately or immediately, 1 
possess the power of granting their own money, or no shadow 
of liberty could subsist. The colonies draw from you, as with 
their lifeblood, these ideas and principles — their love of liberty, 
as with you, fixed and attached on this specific point of taxing. 
Liberty might be safe, or might be endangered, in twenty other 
particulars, without their being much pleased or alarmed. Here 
they felt its pulse; and as they found that beat, they thought 
themselves sick or sound. I do not say whether they were right 
or wrong in applying your general arguments to their own case. 
It is not easy, indeed, to make a monopoly of theorems and 
corollaries. The fact is that they did thus apply those gen- 

1" Mediately or immediately," i.e., indirectly or directly. 



34 EDMUND BURKE ON CONCILIATION 

eral arguments; and your mode of governing them, whether 
through lenity or indolence, through wisdom or mistake, con- 
firmed them in the imagination that they, as well as you, had an 
interest in these common principles. 

\ They were further confirmed in this pleasing error by the 
form of their provincial legislative assemblies. Their govern- 
ments are popular in a high degree. Some are merely popular; ml 
all, the popular representative is the most weighty; and this share 
of the people in their ordinary government never fails to inspire 
them with lofty sentiments, and with a strong aversion from 
whatever tends to deprive them of their chief importance. 
' ^ If anything were wanting to this necessary operation of the 
form of government, religion would have given it a complete 
effect. Religion, always a principle of energy, in this new people 
is no way worn out or impaired ; and their mode of professing it 
is also one main cause of this free spirit. The people are Protes- 
tants, and of that kind which is the most adverse to all implicit 
submission of mind and opinion. This is a persuasion not only 
favorable to liberty, but built upon it. I do not think, Sir, that 
the reason of this averseness in the dissenting churches, from all 
that looks like absolute government, is so much to be sought in 
their religious tenets as in their history. Every one knows that 
the Roman Catholic religion is at least coeval with most of the 
governments where it prevails ; that it has generally gone hand 
in hand with them, and received great favor and every kind 
of support from authority. The Church of England, too, was 
formed from her cradle under the nursing care of regular govern- 
ment. But the dissenting interests have sprung up in direct op- 
position to all the ordinary powers of the world, and could justify 
that opposition only on a strong claim to natural liberty. Their 
very existence depended on the powerful and unremitted asser- 
tion of that claim. All Protestantism, even the most cold and 
passive, is a sort of dissent. But the religion most prevalent in 
our northern colonies is a refinement on the principle of resist- 
ance; it is the dissidence of dissent, 1 and the Protestantism of 

1 "Dissidence of dissent," i.e., the very essence of dissent. 



WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 35 

the Protestant religion. This religion, under a variety of denom- 
inations agreeing in nothing but in the communion of the spirit 
of liberty, is predominant in most of the northern provinces, where 
the Church of England, notwithstanding its legal rights, is in 
reality no more than a sort of private sect, not composing, most 
probably, the tenth of the people. The colonists left England 
when this spirit was high, and in the emigrants was the highest 
of all ; and even that stream of foreigners which has been con- 
stantly flowing into these colonies has, for the greatest part, been 
composed of dissenters from the establishments of their several 
countries, and they have brought with them a temper and char- 
acter far from alien to that of the people with whom they mixed. 
j Sir, I can perceive by their manner that some gentlemen object 
>to the latitude of this description, because in the southern colo- 
nies the Church of England forms a large body, and has a reg- 
ular establishment. It is certainly true. There is, however, a 
circumstance attending these colonies which, in my opinion, fully 
counterbalances this difference, and makes the spirit of liberty 
still more high and haughty than in those to the northward. It 
is that in Virginia and in the Carolinas they have a vast multi- 
tude of slaves. Where this is the case in any part of the world, 
those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of their 
freedom. Freedom is to them not only an enjoyment, but a kind 
of rank and privilege. Not seeing there that freedom, as in coun- 
tries where it is a common blessing and as broad and general as 
the air, may be united with much abject toil, with great misery, 
with all the exterior of servitude, liberty looks amongst them like 
something that is more noble and liberal. I do not mean, Sir, to 
commend the superior morality of this sentiment, which has at 
least as much pride as virtue in it; but I cannot alter the nature 
of man. The fact is so; and these people of the southern colo- 
nies are much more strongly, and with a higher and more stubborn 
spirit, attached to liberty than those to the northward. Such 
were all the ancient commonwealths ; such were our Gothic i an- 

1 The ancestors of the English were the Angles and not the Goths ; both 
were Teutonic tribes. 



36 EDMUND BURKE ON CONCILIATION 

cestors ; such in our days were the Poles ; x and such will be all 
masters of slaves who are not slaves themselves. In such a peo-;> 
pie the haughtiness of domination combines with the spirit of 
freedom, fortifies it, and renders it invincible. 
J/y Permit me, Sir, to add another circumstance in our colonies^ 
which contributes no mean part toward the growth and effect of» 
this untractable spirit. I mean their education. In no country 
perhaps in the world is the law so general a study. The profes- 
sion itself is numerous and powerful ; and in most provinces it 
takes the lead. The greater number of the deputies sent to the 
Congress 2 were lawyers. But all who read — and most do read — 
endeavor to obtain some smattering in that science. I have been 
told by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his business, 
after tracts of popular devotion, were so many books as those on " 
the law exported to the plantations. The colonists have now 
fallen into the way of printing them for their own use. I hear 
that they have sold nearly as many of Blackstone's " Commenta- 
ries " 3 in America as in England. General Gage 4 marks out this 
disposition very particularly in a letter on your table. He states 
that all the people in his government are lawyers, or smatterers 
in law ; and that in Boston they have been enabled, by successful 
chicane, wholly to evade many parts of one of your capital penal 
constitutions. 

The smartness of debate will say that this knowledge ought to 
teach them more clearly the rights of legislature, their obligation 
to obedience, and the penalties of rebellion. All this is mighty 
well. But my honorable and learned friend 5 on the floor, who 

1 There were but two classes in Poland, nobles and serfs. The nobles had 
been struggling for freer institutions, but the partition of Poland between 
Austria, Germany, and Russia in 1772 had defeated their hopes. 

2 The First Colonial Congress, which met in Philadelphia in September, 

1774- 

3 Sir William Blackstone (1 723-1 780) wrote Commentaries on the Laws 
of England, a work extensively used by students of law. Its popularity is 
due largely to the clearness and perfection of its style. 

4 Then commander of the British troops in Boston. 
6 The attorney-general, Thurlow. 



WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 37 

• 
^condescends to mark what I say for animadversion, will disdain 

that ground. He has heard, as well as I, that when great honors 
and emoluments do not win over this knowledge to the service 
of the state, it is a formidable adversary to government. If the 
spirit be not tamed and broken by these happy methods, it is stub- 
born and litigious. Abeunt studia in mores. 1 This study renders 
men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in de- 
fense, full of resources. In other countries, the people, more 
simple and of a less mercurial cast, judge of an ill principle in 
government only by an actual grievance ; here they anticipate the 
evil, and judge of the pressure of the grievance by the badness of 
the principle. They augur misgovernment at a distance, and snuff 
the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze. 
/The last cause of this disobedient spirit in the colonies is 
hardly less powerful than the rest, as it is not merely moral, but 
laid deep in the natural constitution of. things. Three thousand 
miles of ocean lie between you and them. No contrivance can 
prevent the effect of this distance in weakening government. 
Seas roll and months pass between the order and the execution ; 
and the want of a speedy explanation of a single point is enough 
to defeat a whole system. You have, indeed, winged ministers of 
vengeance, 2 who carry your bolts in their pounces 3 to the remotest 
verge of the sea. But there a power steps in, that limits the ar- 
rogance of raging passions and furious elements, and says, " So 
far shalt thou go, and no further." 4 Who are you, that should 
fret and rage, and bite the chains of nature ? Nothing worse 
happens to you than does to all nations who have extensive em- 
pire ; and it happens in all the forms into which empire can be 
thrown. In large bodies, the circulation of power must be less 
vigorous at the extremities. Nature has said it. The Turk can- 
not govern Egypt, and Arabia, and Kurdistan, 5 as he governs 

1 "Pursuits become habits." See Ovid, Heroides, xv. 83 

2 Warships. 3 Talons. 

4 See Job xxviii. 11, " Hitherto shalt thou come, and no further." 

5 A country in western Asia, belonging partly to Persia and partly to 
Turkey. 



38 EDMUND BURKE ON CONCILIATION 

Thrace ; nor has he the same dominion in Crimea and Algiers., 
which he has at Brusa 1 and Smyrna. Despotism itself is obliged 
to truck and huckster. 2 The Sultan gets such obedience as he 
can. He governs with a loose rein, that he may govern at all ; 
and the whole of the force and vigor of his authority in his center 
is derived from a prudent relaxation in all his borders. Spain, 
in her provinces, is, perhaps, not so well obeyed as you are in 
yours. She complies, too ; she submits ; she watches times. This 
is the immutable condition, the eternal law, of extensive and de- 
tached empire. 

Then, Sir, from these six capital sources, — of descent, of form 
of government, of religion in the northern provinces, of man- 
ners in the southern, of education, of the remoteness of situa- 
tion from the first mover of government, — from all these causes 
a fierce spirit of liberty has grown up. It has grown with the 
growth of the people in your colonies, and increased with the 
increase of their wealth ; a spirit that, unhappily meeting with an 
exercise of power in England, which, however lawful, is not rec 
oncilable to any ideas of liberty, much less with theirs, has kin- 
dled this flame that is ready to consume us. 

I do not mean to commend either the spirit in this excess, or 
the moral causes which produce it. Perhaps a more smooth and 
accommodating spirit of freedom in them would be more accep- 
table to us. Perhaps ideas of liberty might be desired, more 
reconcilable with an arbitrary and boundless authority. Perhaps 
we might wish the colonists to be persuaded, that their liberty is 
more secure when held in trust for them by us (as their guar- 
dians during a perpetual minority), than with any part of it in 
their own hands. The question is, not whether their spirit de- 
serves praise or blame, but — what, in the name of God, shall 
we do with it ? You have before you the object, such as it is, 
with all its glories, with all its imperfections on its head. 3 You 
see the magnitude; the importance; the temper; the habits; 

1 A city in Asia Minor, between Constantinople and Smyrna. 

2 "Truck and huckster," i.e., resort to petty bargaining. 

3 See Shakespeare, Hamlet, act i., sc. 3. 



1 



WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 39 

:he disorders. By all these considerations we are strongly urged 
to determine something concerning it. We are called upon to 
fix some rule and line for our future conduct, which may give a 
little stability to our politics, and prevent the return of such un- 
happy deliberations as the present. Every such return will bring 
the matter before us in a still more untractable form. For what 
astonishing and incredible things have we not seen already ! 
What monsters have not been generated from this unnatural con- 
tention! Whilst every principle of authority and resistance has 
been pushed, upon both sides, as far as it would go, there is no- 
thing so solid and certain, either in reasoning or in practice, that 
has not been shaken. 

Until very lately, all authority in America seemed to be nothing 
but an emanation from yours. Even the popular part of the col- 
ony constitution derived all its activity and its first vital movement 
from the pleasure of the Crown. We thought, Sir, that the ut- 
most which the discontented colonists could do, was to disturb 
authority ; we never dreamt they could of themselves supply it, 
knowing in general what an operose business it is to establish a 
government absolutely new. But having, for our purposes in this 
contention, resolved that none but an obedient assembly should 
sit, the humors of the people there, finding all passage through 
the legal channel stopped, with great violence broke out another 
way. Some provinces have tried their experiment, as we have 
tried ours ; and theirs has succeeded. They have formed a gov- 
ernment sufficient for its purposes, without the bustle of a revolu- 
tion or the troublesome formality of an election. Evident neces- 
sity and tacit consent have done the business in an instant. So 
well they have done it, that Lord Dunmore 1 (the account is 
among the fragments on your table) tells you that the new insti- 
tution is infinitely better obeyed than the ancient government ever 
was in its most fortunate periods. Obedience is what makes gov- 
ernment, and not the names by which it is called ; not the name 
of governor, as formerly, or committee, as at present. This new 
governmeut has originated directly from the people, and was not 

1 Then governor of Virginia. 



40 EDMUND BURKE ON CONCILIATION 

transmitted through any of the ordinary artificial media of a posi 
tive constitution. It was not a manufacture ready formed, an<** 
transmitted to them in that condition from England. The evil 
arising from hence is this : that the colonists, having once found 
the possibility of enjoying the advantages of order in the midst of 
a struggle for liberty, such struggles will not henceforward seem 
so terrible to the settled and sober part of mankind as they had 
appeared before the trial. 

Pursuing the same plan of punishing by the denial of the exer- 
cise of government to still greater lengths, we wholly abrogated 
the ancient government of Massachusetts. 1 We were confident 
that the first feeling, if not the very prospect of anarchy, would 
instantly enforce a complete submission. The experiment was 
tried. A new, strange, unexpected face of things appeared. 
Anarchy is found tolerable. A vast province has now subsisted — 
and subsisted in a considerable degree of health and vigor — for 
near a twelvemonth, without governor, without public council, 
without judges, without executive magistrates. How long it will 
continue in this state, or what may arise out of this unheard-of 
situation, how can the wisest of us conjecture ? Our late experi- 
ence has taught us, that many of those fundamental principles, 
formerly believed infallible, are either not of the importance they 
were imagined to be; or that we have not at all adverted to some 
other far more important and far more powerful principles, which 
entirely overrule those we had considered as omnipotent. I am 
much against any further experiments which tend to put to the 
proof any more of these allowed opinions which contribute so 
much to the public tranquillity. In effect, we suffer as much at 
home by this loosening of all ties, and this concussion of all estab- 
lished opinions, as we do abroad. For, in order to prove that the 
Americans have no right to their liberties, we are every day en- 
deavoring to subvert the maxims which preserve the whole spirit 

1 In 1774, acts were passed by Parliament transferring to the king the 
appointment of all judges and administrative officers in the colony of Massa- 
chusetts, and forbidding the holding of town meetings without the consent of 
the governor. 



WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 41 

] of our own. To prove that the Americans ought not to be free, 
: we are obliged to depreciate the value of freedom itself; and we 
never seem to gain a paltry advantage over them in debate, with- 
out attacking some of those principles, or deriding some of those 
feelings, for which our ancestors have shed their blood. 
//0 But, Sir, in wishing to put an end to pernicious experiments, I 
' do not mean to preclude the fullest inquiry. Far from it ! Far 
from deciding on a sudden or partial view, I would patiently go 
round and round the subject, and survey it minutely in every 
possible aspect. Sir, if I were capable of engaging you to an 
equal attention, I would state that, as far as I am capable of dis- 
cerning, there are but three ways of proceeding relative to this 
stubborn spirit which prevails in your colonies and disturbs your 
government. These are : to change that spirit, as inconvenient, 
by removing the causes; to prosecute it as criminal; or to 
comply with it as necessary. I would not be guilty of an imper- 
fect enumeration; I can think of but these three. Another has 
indeed been started — that of giving up the colonies; but it met 
so slight a reception that I do not think myself obliged to dwell a 
great while upon it. It is nothing but a little sally of anger, like 
the frowardness of peevish children, who, when they cannot get 
all they would have, are resolved to take nothing. 

The first of these plans, — to change the spirit as inconvenient 
y removing the causes, — I think, is the most like a systematic 
proceeding. It is radical in its principle ; but it is attended with 
great difficulties, some of them little short, as I conceive, of impos- 
sibilities. This will appear by examining into the plans which 
have been proposed. 

As the growing population in the colonies is evidently one 
cause of their resistance, it was, last session, mentioned in both 
Houses, by men of weight, and received not without applause, 
that in order to check this evil it would be proper for the Crown 
to make no further grants of land. But to this scheme there are 
two objections. The first, that there is already so much unsettled 
land in private hands as to afford room for an immense future 
population, although the Crown not only withheld its grants but 



, 



■ 



42 EDMUND BURKE ON CONCILIATION 

annihilated its soil. If this be the case, then the only effect of[ 
this avarice of desolation, this hoarding of a royal wilderness/* 
would be to raise the value of the possessions in the hands of the; 
great private monopolists, without any adequate check to the 
growing and alarming mischief of population. 
n But if you stopped your grants, what would be the conse- 
quence ? The people would occupy without grants. They have 
already so occupied in many places. You cannot station garri- 
sons in every part of these deserts. If you drive the people from 
one place, they will carry on their annual tillage, and remove with 
their flocks and herds to another. Many of the people in the 
back settlements are already little attached to particular situations. 
Already they have topped the Appalachian mountains. From 
thence they behold before them an immense plain — one vast, 
rich, level meadow, a square of five hundred miles. Over this 
they would wander without a possibility of restraint ; they would 
change their manners with the habits of their life; would soon 
forget a government by which they were disowned ; would become 
hordes of English Tartars, 1 and, pouring down upon your unfor- 
tified frontiers a fierce and irresistible cavalry, become masters of 
your governors and your counselors, your collectors and comp- 
trollers, and of all the slaves that adhered to them. Such would, 
and, in no long time, must be, the effect of attempting to forbid 
as a crime, and to suppress as an evil, the command and blessing 
of Providence, " Increase and multiply." 2 Such would be the 
happy result of an endeavor to keep as a lair of wild beasts that 
earth which God, by an express charter, has given to the children 
of men. 3 Far different, and surely much wiser, has been our 
policy hitherto. Hitherto we have invited our people, by every 
kind of bounty, to fixed establishments. We have invited the 
husbandman to look to authority for his title. We have taught 
him piously to believe in the mysterious virtue of wax and parch- 

1 The Tartars were a fierce Mongol tribe, which invaded Russia in Europe 
in the thirteenth century. 

2 See Gen. i. 8. 

3 See Ps. cxv. 16. 



WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 43 

/nent. 1 We have thrown each tract of land, as it was peopled, 
r nto districts, that the ruling power should never be wholly out 
)f sight. We have settled all we could ; and we have carefully 
Attended every settlement with government. 

y I Adhering, Sir, as I do, to this policy, as well as for the reasons 
I have just given, I think this new project of hedging in popula- 
tion to be neither prudent nor practicable. 
t) 2To impoverish the colonies in general, and in particular to 
arrest the noble course of their marine enterprises, would be a 
more easy task. I freely confess it. We have shown a disposi- 
tion to a system of this kind ; a disposition even to continue the 
restraint after the offense, looking on ourselves as rivals to our 
colonies, and persuaded that of course we must gain all that they 
shall lose. Much mischief we may certainly do. The power 
inadequate to all other things is often more than sufficient for this. 
I do not look on the direct and immediate power of the colonies 
to resist our violence as very formidable. In this, however, I may 
be mistaken. But when I consider that we have colonies for no 
purpose but to be serviceable to us, it seems to my poor under- 
standing a little preposterous to make them unserviceable in 
order to keep them obedient. It is, in truth, nothing more than 
the old and (as I thought) exploded problem of tyranny, which 
proposes to beggar its subjects into submission. But remember, 
when you have completed your system of impoverishment, that 
nature still proceeds in her ordinary course ; that discontent will 
increase with misery ; and that there are critical moments in the 
fortune of all states, when they who are too weak to contribute to 
your prosperity may be strong enough to complete your ruin. 
Spoliaiis arma sitpersiint! 1 

*\ 3 The temper and character which prevail in our colonies are, I 
am afraid, unalterable by any human art. We cannot, I fear, 
falsify the pedigree of this fierce people, and persuade them that 
they are not sprung from a nation in whose veins the blood of 
freedom circulates. The language in which they would hear you 

1 " Wax and parchment," i. e., legal procedure. 

2 " Though plundered they yet have arms." See Juvenal, Sat. viii. 



44 EDMUND BURKE ON CONCILIATION 

tell them this tale would detect the imposition ; your speech woulid 
betray you. An Englishman is the unfit test person on earth tjo 
argue another Englishman into slavery. 

I think it is nearly as little in our power to change their repub- 
lican religion as their free descent, or to substitute the Roman 
Catholic as a penalty, or the Church of England as an improve- 
ment. The mode of inquisition and dragooning x is going out of 
fashion in the Old World; and I should not confide much to their 
efficacy in the New. The education of the Americans is also on 
the same unalterable bottom with their religion. You cannot 
persuade them to burn their books of curious science, to banish 
their lawyers from their courts of laws, or to quench the lights 
of their assemblies by refusing to choose those persons who are 
best read in their privileges. It would be no less impracticable 
to think of wholly annihilating the popular assemblies in which 
these lawyers sit. The army by which we must govern in their 
place would be far more chargeable to us ; not quite so effectual, 
and perhaps in the end full as difficult to be kept in obedience. 
f U With regard to the high aristocratic spirit of Virginia and the 
southern colonies it has been proposed, I know, to reduce it by 
declaring a general enfranchisement of their slaves. This project 
has had its advocates and panegyrists, yet I never could argue 
myself into any opinion of it. Slaves are often much attached to 
their masters. A general wild offer of liberty would not always 
be accepted. History furnishes few instances of it. It is some- 
times as hard to persuade slaves to be free as it is to compel free- 
men to be slaves ; and in this auspicious scheme we should have 
both these pleasing tasks on our hands at once. But when we 
talk of enfranchisement, do we not perceive that the American 
master may enfranchise too, and arm servile hands in defense of 
freedom ? — a measure to which other people have had recourse 
more than once, and not without success, in a desperate situation 
of their affairs. 

1 One device for persecuting the Protestants in France in the reign of Louis 
XIV. was to quarter upon them dragoons, who were instructed to annoy them 
in every conceivable way. 



WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 45 

V.fl* Slaves as these unfortunate black people are, and dull as all 
•tnen are from slavery, must they not a little suspect the offer of 
freedom from that very nation, which has sold them to their pres- 
ent masters ; from that nation, one of whose causes of quarrel 
with those masters is their refusal to deal any more in that inhu- 
man traffic ? An offer of freedom from England would come 
rather oddly, shipped to them in an African vessel, which is re- 
fused an entry into the ports of Virginia or Carolina, with a cargo 
of three hundred Angola 1 negroes. It would be curious to see 
the Guinea captain attempting at the same instant to publish his 
proclamation of liberty, and to advertise his sale of slaves. 2 
i-x'^But let us suppose all these moral difficulties got over. The 
~ ocean remains. You cannot pump this dry ; and as long as it 
continues in its present bed, so long all the causes which weaken 
authority by distance will continue. " Ye gods, annihilate but 
space and time, and make two lovers happy ! " 3 was a pious and 
passionate prayer ; but just as reasonable as many of the serious 

f'shes of very grave and solemn politicians. 
If, then, Sir, it seems almost desperate to think of any altera- 
tive course for changing the moral causes (and not quite easy to 
remove the natural) which produce prejudices irreconcilable to 
the late exercise of our authority, — but that the spirit infallibly will 
continue, and, continuing, will produce such effects as now em- 
barrass us. — the second mode under consideration is to prosecute 
that spirit in its overt acts as criminal. 
fv\ At this proposition I must pause a moment. The thing seems 
r. a great deal too big for my ideas of jurisprudence. It should 
seem to my way of conceiving such matters, that there is a very 
wide difference in reason and policy between the mode of pro- 
ceeding on the irregular conduct of scattered individuals, or even 

1 A colony belonging to Portugal, on the west coast of Africa, formerly 
famous for its extensive slave trade. 

2 Though the employment of slaves in England had been forbidden by a 
law enacted in 1772, the English nation continued to carry on a very lucrative 
trade, in negroes imported from Africa, with the American colonies. 

3 From one of Dryden's plays. 



46 EDMUND BURKE ON CONCILIATION 

of bands of men, who disturb order within the state, and thy 
civil dissensions which may from time to time, on great questions^ 
agitate the several communities which compose a great empire. 
It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic to apply the ordinary 
ideas of criminal justice to this great public contest. I do not 
know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole 
people. I cannot insult and ridicule the feelings of millions of 
my fellow creatures as Sir Edward Coke 1 insulted one excellent 
individual (Sir Walter Raleigh) at the bar. I hope I am not ripe 
to pass sentence on the gravest public bodies, intrusted with 
magistracies of great authority and dignity, and charged with 
the safety of their fellow citizens upon the very same title that I 
am. I really think that for wise men this is not judicious; for 
sober men, not decent; for minds tinctured with humanity, not 
mild and merciful. 
^O Perhaps, Sir, I am mistaken in my idea of an empire, as dis- 
tinguished from a single state or kingdom. But my idea of it is 
this : that an empire is the aggregate of many states under one 
common head, whether this head be a monarch or a presiding 
republic. It does, in such constitutions, frequently happen (and 
nothing but the dismal, cold, dead uniformity of servitude can 
prevent its happening) that the subordinate parts have many 
local privileges and immunities. Between these privileges and 
the supreme common authority the line may be extremely nice. 
Of course disputes — often, too, very bitter disputes — and much ill 
blood will arise. But though every privilege is an exenrption (in 
the case) from the ordinary exercise of the supreme authority, it is 
no denial of it. The claim of a privilege seems rather, ex vi 
termini? to imply a superior power. For to talk of the privileges 
of a state, or of a person, who has no superior, is hardly any bet- 
ter than speaking nonsense. Now, in such unfortunate quarrels 
among the component parts of a great political union of com- 

1 A noted lawyer (1552-1634), the greatest of his day. He was harsh and 
violent in his manner, and, in the trial of Sir Walter Raleigh, treated the 
prisoner with marked discourtesy. 

2 By the meaning, or force, of the expression. 



, 



WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 47 

I nunities, I can scarcely conceive anything more completely im- 
\ prudent than for the head of the empire to insist that, if any privi- 
^ .ege is pleaded against his will or his acts, his whole authority 
is denied; instantly to proclaim rebellion, to beat to arms, and to 
put the offending provinces under the ban. Will not this, Sir, 
very soon teach the provinces to make no distinctions on their 
part ? Will it not teach them that the government, against which 
a claim of liberty is tantamount to high treason, is a government 
to which submission is equivalent to slavery ? It may not always 
be quite convenient to impress dependent communities with such 
an idea. * 

p | We are, indeed, in all disputes with the colonies, by the neces- 
sity of things, the judge. It is true, Sir. But I confess that the 
character of judge in my own cause is a thing that frightens me. 
Instead of filling me with pride, I am exceedingly humbled by it. 
I cannot proceed with a stern, assured, judicial confidence, until 
I find myself in something more like a judicial character. I 
must have these hesitations as long as I am compelled to recol- 
lect that, in my little reading upon such contests as these, the 
sense of mankind has, at least, as often decided against the su- 
perior as the subordinate power. Sir, let me add, too, that the 
opinion of my having some abstract right in my favor would not 
put me much at my ease in passing sentence, unless I could be 
sure ihat there were no rights which, in their exercise under cer- 
tain circumstances, were not the most odious of all wrongs, and 
the most vexatious of all injustice. Sir, these considerations 
have great weight with me, wJien I find things so circumstanced 
that I see the same party, at once a civil litigant against me in 
point of right, and a culprit before me ; while I sit as a criminal 
judge on acts of his, whose moral quality is to be decided upon 
the merits of that very litigation. Men are every now and then 
put, by the complexity of human affairs, into strange situations; 
but justice is the same, let the judge be in what situation he will. 
f %. There is, Sir, also a circumstance which convinces me that this 
mode of criminal proceeding is not (at least in the present stage 
of our contest) altogether expedient ; which is nothing less than 



48 EDMUND BURKE ON CONCILIATION 

the conduct of those very persons who have seemed to adopts 
that mode, by lately declaring a rebellion in Massachusetts Ba)C. 
as they had formerly addressed to have traitors brought hither. , 
under an act of Henry VIII. x for trial. For though rebellion is 
declared, it is not proceeded against as such ; nor have any steps 
been taken toward the apprehension or conviction of any indi- 
vidual offender, either on our late or our former address ; but 
modes of public coercion have been adopted, and such as have 
much more resemblance to a sort of qualified hostility toward an 
independent power than the punishment of rebellious subjects. 
All this seems rather inconsistent ; but it shows how difficult it is 
to apply these juridical ideas to our present case. 

fc j In this situation, let us seriously and coolly ponder. What is 
it we have got by all our menaces, which have been many and 
ferocious ? What advantage have we derived from the penal 
laws we have passed, and which, for the time, have been severe 
and numerous ? What advances have we made toward our ob- 
ject, by the sending of a force, which, by land and sea, is no con- 
temptible strength ? Has the disorder abated ? Nothing less. 2 
When I see things in this situation, after such confident hopes, 
bold promises, and active exertions, I cannot, for my life, avoid a 
suspicion that the plan itself is not correctly right. 

{f\ If, then, the removal of the causes of this spirit of American 
liberty be, for the greater part, or rather entirely, impracticable ; 
if the ideas of criminal process be inapplicable, or if applicable, 
are in the highest degree inexpedient, what way yet remains? 
No way is open but the third and last — to comply with the 
American spirit as necessary ; or, if you please, to submit to it as 
a necessaiy evil. 

If we adopt this mode, if we mean to conciliate and concede, 
let us see of what nature the concession ought to be. To ascertain 
the nature of our concession, we must look at their complaint. 
The colonies complain that they have not the characteristic 
mark and seal of British freedom. They complain that they are 

1 King of England from 1509 to 1547. 

2 " Nothing less," i.e., nothing has abated less. 



WITH THE AMERICAN- COLONIES. 49 

taxed in a Parliament in which they are not represented. If you 
mean to satisfy them at all, you must satisfy them with regard to 
this complaint. If you mean to please any people, you must 
give them the boon which they ask; not what you may think 
better for them, but of a kind totally different. Such an act may 
be a wise regulation, but it is no concession ; whereas our present 
theme is the mode of giving satisfaction. 
(9 y?Sir, I think you must perceive that I am resolved this day to 
have nothing at all to do with the question of the right of taxa- 
tion. Some gentlemen startle — but it is true ; I put it totally out 
of the question. It is less than nothing in my consideration. I 
do not indeed wonder, nor will you, Sir, that gentlemen of pro- 
found learning are fond of displaying it on this profound subject. 
But my consideration is narrow, confined, and wholly limited to 
the policy of the question. I do not examine whether the giving 
away a man's money be a power excepted and reserved out of 
the general trust of government; and how far all mankind, in 
all forms of polity, are entitled to an exercise of that right by the 
charter of nature. Or whether, on the contrary, a right of taxa- 
tion is necessarily involved in the general principle of legislation, 
and inseparable from the ordinary supreme power. These are 
deep questions, where great names militate against each other, 
where reason is perplexed, and an appeal to authorities only 
thickens the confusion. For high and reverend authorities lift up 
their heads on both sides, and there is no sure footing in the mid- 
dle. This point is the great 

Serbonian bog> 
'Twixt Damiata and Mount Cassius old, 
Where armies whole have sunk. 1 

I do not intend to be overwhelmed in that bog, though in such 
respectable company. 

1 See Milton, Paradise Lost, Book ii., lines 592, 593. Lake Serbonis 
was surrounded by high, hills of sand, which was often carried into the water 
by violent winds, and floated on the surface, giving the lake a solid appear- 
ance. Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus speak of armies that had disappeared 
in its depths. 
4 



$o EDMUND BURKE ON CONCILIATION 

The question with me is, not whether you have a right to render 
your people miserable, but whether it is not your interest to make 
them happy. It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but^ 
what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do. Is a 
politic act the worse for being a generous one ? Is no concession 
proper but that which is made from your want of right to keep 
what you grant ? Or does it lessen the grace or dignity of relax- 
ing in the exercise of an odious claim, because you have your 
evidence room mil of titles, and your magazines stuffed with arms 
to enforce them ? What signify all those titles, and all those arms ? 
Of what avail are they, when the reason of the thing tells me that 
the assertion of my title is the loss of my suit, and that I could do 
nothing but wound myself by the use of my own weapons ? 
L I Such is steadfastly my opinion of the absolute necessity of 
keeping up the concord of this empire by a unity of spirit, 
though in a diversity of operations, that, if I were sure the colo- 
nists had, at their leaving this country, sealed a regular compact 
of servitude; that they had solemnly abjured all the rights of 
citizens; that they had made a vow to renounce all ideas of 
liberty for them and their posterity to all generations; yet I 
should hold myself obliged to conform to the temper I found 
universally prevalent in my own day, and to govern two millions 
of men, impatient of servitude, on the principles of freedom. I 
am not determining a point of law ; I am restoring tranquillity ; 
and the general character and situation of a people must determine 
what sort of government is fitted for them. That point nothing 

else can or ought to determine. $ c a '/)" < V U • 

My idea, therefore, without considering whether we yield as 
matter of right, or grant as matter of favor, is to admit the people 
of our colonies into an interest in the constitution; and, by record- 
ing that admission in the journals of Parliament, to give them as 
strong an assurance as the nature of the thing will admit, that we 
mean forever to adhere to that solemn declaration of systematic 
indulgence. 

! Some years ago, the repeal of a revenue act, upon its under- 
stood principle, might have served to show that we intended an 



WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 5 1 

unconditional abatement of the exercise of a taxing power. Such 
a measure was then sufficient to remove all suspicion, and to give 
perfect content. But unfortunate events since that time may 
make something further necessary; and not more necessary for 
the satisfaction of the colonies than for the dignity and con- 
sistency of our own future proceedings. . 

*7 I have taken a very incorrect measure of the disposition of the 
House, if this proposal in itself would be received with dislike. I 
think, Sir, we have few American financiers. But our misfortune 
is, we are too acute; we are too exquisite in our conjectures of 
the future, for men oppressed with such great and present evils. 
The more moderate among the opposers of parliamentary conces- 
sion freely confess that they hope no good from taxation; but 

* they apprehend the colonists have further views, and, if this point 
were conceded, they would instantly attack the trade laws. 
These gentlemen are convinced that this was the intention from 
the beginning, and the quarrel of the Americans with taxation 
was no more than a cloak and cover to this design. Such 
has been the language even of a gentleman of real moder- 
ation, and of a natural temper well adjusted to fair and equal 
government. I am, however, Sir, not a little surprised at this 
kind of discourse, whenever I hear it; and I am the more sur- 
prised, on account of the arguments which I constantly find in 
company with it, and which are often urged from the same 
mouths, and on the same day. 

;-j For instance, when we allege that it is against reason to tax a 
people under so many restraints in trade as the Americans, the 
noble lord in the blue riband shall tell you that the restraints on 
trade are futile and useless, of no advantage to us, and of no 
burthen to those on whom they are imposed; that the trade to 
America is not secured by the acts of navigation, but by the 
natural and irresistible advantage of a commercial preference. 

2-^Such is the merit of the trade laws in this posture of the de- 
bate. But when strong internal circumstances are urged against 
the taxes, when the scheme is dissected, when experience and 
the nature of things are brought to prove (and do prove) the 



52 EDMUND BURKE ON CONCILIATION 

utter impossibility of obtaining an effective revenue from the I 
colonies, — when these things are pressed, or rather press them- I 
selves, so as to drive the advocates of colony taxes to a clear 
admission of the futility of the scheme, — then, Sir, the sleeping 
trade laws revive from .their trance ; and this useless taxation is 
to be kept sacred, not for its own sake, but as a counter-guard 
and security of the laws of trade. 

Then, Sir, you keep up revenue laws which are mischievous, in 
order to preserve trade laws that are useless. Such is the wis- 
dom of our plan in both its members. They are separately given 
up as of no value ; and yet one is always to be defended for the 
sake of the other. But I cannot agree with the noble lord, nor 
with the pamphlet 1 from whence he seems to have borrowed these 
ideas concerning the inutility cf the trade laws. For, without 
idolizing them, I am sure they are still, in many ways, of great 
use to us ; and in former times they have been of the greatest. 
They do confine, and they do greatly narrow, the market for the 
Americans. But my perfect conviction of this does not help me 
in the least to discern how the revenue laws form any security 
whatsoever to the commercial regulations; or that these com- 
mercial regulations are the true ground of the quarrel; or that 
the giving way, in any one instance, of authority is to lose all 
that may remain unconceded. 

One fact is clear and indisputable. The public and avowed 
origin of this quarrel was on taxation. This quarrel has indeed 
brought on new disputes on new questions; but certainly the 
least bitter, and the fewest of all, on the trade laws. To judge 
which of the two be the real, radical cause of quarrel, we have 
to see whether the commercia-l dispute did, in order of time, 
precede the dispute on taxation ? There is not a shadow of 
evidence for it. Next, to enable us to judge whether at this 
moment a dislike to the trade laws be the real cause of quarrel, 
it is absolutely necessary to put the taxes out of the question by 

1 Written by Dr. Tucker, Dean of Gloucester, who wrote tracts on politi- 
cal and commercial subjects, and advocated granting the Americans inde- 
pendence. 



WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 53 

a repeal. See how the Americans act in this position, and then 
you will be able to discern correctly what is the true object of 
the controversy, or whether any controversy at all will remain. 
Unless you consent to remove this cause of difference, it is im- 
possible, with decency, to assert that the dispute is not upon what 
it is avowed to be. And I would, Sir, recommend to your seri- 
ous consideration, whether it be prudent to form a rule for pun- 
ishing people, not on their own acts but on your conjectures ? 
Surely it is preposterous at the very best. It is not justifying 
your anger by their misconduct; but it is converting your ill- 
will into their delinquency. 

But the colonies will go further. Alas ! alas ! When will this 
speculating against fact and reason end ? What will quiet these 
panic fears which we entertain of the hostile effect of a concilia- 
tory conduct ? Is it true that no case can exist in which it is 
proper for the sovereign to accede to the desires of his discon- 
tented subjects ? Is there anything peculiar in this case, to make 
a rule for itself? Is all authority of course lost, when it is not 
pushed to the extreme ? Is it a certain maxim, that the fewer 
causes of dissatisfaction are left by government, the more the sub- 
ject will be inclined to resist and rebel ? 

All these objections being in fact no more than suspicions, con- 
jectures, divinations, formed in defiance of fact and experience, 
they did not, Sir, discourage me from entertaining the idea of a 
conciliatory concession, founded on the principles which I have 
just stated. 

In forming a plan for this purpose, I endeavored to put my- 
' 'self in that frame of mind which was the most natural, and the 
most reasonable, and which was certainly the most probable 
means of securing me from all error. I set out with a perfect 
distrust of my own abilities, a total renunciation of every specu- 
lation of my own, and with a profound reverence for the wisdom 
of our ancestors, who have left us the inheritance of so happy a 

I constitution, and so flourishing an empire, and — what is a thou- 
sand times more valuable — the treasury of the maxims and prin- 



iX 



4 EDMUND BURKE ON CONCILIATION 

During the reigns of the Kings of Spain of the Austrian fam- 
ily, 1 whenever they were at a loss in the Spanish councils, it was 
common for their statesmen to say that they ought to consult 
the genius of Philip II. 2 The genius of Philip II. might mislead 
them; and the issue of their affairs showed that they had not 
chosen the most perfect standard. But, Sir, I am sure that I 
shall not be misled, w r hen, in a case of constitutional difficulty, I 
consult the genius of the English constitution. Consulting at 
that oracle (it was with all due humility and piety), I found four 
capital examples in a similar case before me : those of Ireland, 
Wales, Chester, and Durham. 

Ireland, before the English conquest, though never governed 
y a despotic power, had no Parliament. How far the English 
Parliament itself was at that time modeled according to the 
present form, is disputed among antiquarians. But w r e have all 
the reason in the world to be assured that a form of Parliament, 
such as England then enjoyed, she instantly communicated to 
Ireland ; and we are equally sure that almost every successive 
improvement in constitutional liberty, as fast as it was made 
here, was transmitted thither. The feudal baronage and the 
feudal knighthood, 3 the roots of our primitive constitution, were 
early transplanted into that soil, and grew and flourished there. 
Magna Charta, 4 if it did not give us originally the House of 
Commons, gave us at least a House of Commons of weight and 

1 Charles I. of Spain, better known as Emperor Charles V. of Germany, 
was grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella, and succeeded his grandfather on 
the throne of Spain. His mother was the daughter of Ferdinand and Isa- 
bella, but his father was Archduke of Austria, and so Charles and his descen- 
dants, who occupied the Spanish throne for nearly two hundred years, are some- 
times known as the Kings of the Austrian family. 

2 King of Spain from 1556 to 1598. Spain was at that time in the height 
of her prosperity. 

3 Burke here has reference to the early English system of land tenure, 
government, and representation, from which the present system has been 
gradually evolved. The assemblies convened by the king were made up of 
nobles (who held their land as vassals of the king) and bishops. 

4= The great charter of English liberty, extorted from King John by the 
barons in 1215. 



WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 55 

consequence. But your ancestors did not churlishly sit down 
alone to the feast of Magna Charta. Ireland was made imme- 
diately a partaker. This benefit of English laws and liberties, I 
confess, was not at first extended to all Ireland. Mark the con- 
sequence. English authority and English liberties had exactly 
the same boundaries. Your standard could never be advanced 
an inch before your privileges. Sir John Davies 1 shows, beyond 
a doubt, that the refusal of a general communication of these 
rights was the true cause why Ireland was five hundred years in 
subduing; and after the vain projects of a military government, 
attempted in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, 2 it was soon discov- 
ered that nothing could make that country English in civility 
and allegiance but your laws and your forms of legislature. 

It was not English arms, but the English constitution that con- 
quered Ireland. From that time Ireland has ever had a general 
Parliament, as she had before a partial Parliament. You changed 
the people ; you altered the religion ; but you never touched the 
form or the vital substance of free government in that kingdom. 
You deposed kings ; you restored them ; you altered the succes- 
sion to theirs, as well as to your own Crown; but you never al- 
tered their constitution, the principle of which was respected by 
usurpation, restored with the restoration of monarchy, and estab- 
lished, I trust, for ever, by the glorious Revolution. 3 This has 
made Ireland the great and flourishing kingdom that it is, and 
from a disgrace and a burthen intolerable to this nation, has ren- 
dered her a principal part of our strength and ornament. 

This country cannot be said to have ever formally taxed her. 
The irregular things done in the confusion of mighty troubles, and 
on the hinge of great revolutions, even if all were done that is said 
to have been done, form no example. If they have any effect 

1 A poet and statesman (1570-1626), who, in 1603, was made solicitor- 
general, and soon after attorney-general, of Ireland. A few years later he 
published a valuable work on the political condition of Ireland. 

2 Queen of England from 1558 to 1603. 

3 The Revolution of 1688-89 * n England, in which the doctrine of the di- 
vine right of kings received its death-blow, and the supremacy of Parliament 
was established. 



tj6 EDMUND BURKE ON CONCILIATION 

in argument, they make an exception to prove the rule. None 
of your own liberties could stand a moment if the casual devia- 
tions from them, at such times, were suffered to be used as proofs 
of their nullity. By the lucrative amount of such casual breaches 
in the constitution, judge what the stated and fixed rule of supply 
has been in that kingdom. Your Irish pensioners would starve 
if they had no other fund to live on than taxes granted by Eng- 
lish authority. Turn your eyes to those popular grants from 
whence all your great supplies are come, and learn to respect 
that only source of public wealth in the British Empire. 

My next example is Wales. This country was said to be re- 
duced by Henry III. * It was said more truly to be so by Ed- 
ward I. 2 But though then conquered, it was not looked upon 
as any part of the realm of England. Its old constitution, what- 
ever that might have been, was destroyed ; and no good one was 
substituted in its place. The care of that tract was put into the 
hands of lords marchers 3 — a form of government of a very singu- 
lar kind, a strange heterogeneous monster, something between 
hostility and government; perhaps it has a sort of resemblance, 
according to the modes of those times, to that of commander in 
chief at present, to whom all civil power is granted as secondary. 
The manners of the Welsh nation followed the genius of the gov- 
ernment. The people were ferocious, restive, savage, and unculti- 
vated ; sometimes composed, never pacified. Wales, within itself, 
was in perpetual disorder; and it kept the frontier of England in 
perpetual alarm. Benefits from it to the state there were none; 
Wales was only known to England by incursion and invasion. 
\ Sir, during that state of things, Parliament was not idle. They 
attempted to subdue the fierce spirit of the Welsh by all sorts of 
vigorous laws. They prohibited by statute the sending all sorts 

1 King of England from 1216 lo 1272. 

2 King of England from 1272 to 1307. Wales gave allegiance to Henry III. 
at times, when compelled to do so, but was not fully conquered until the time 
of Edward I. 

■ 3 The lords marchers were officers appointed by England to keep order in 
the marches, or border lands, of Wales. 



f 



5 



WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 57 

of arms into Wales, as you prohibit by proclamation (with some- 
thing more of doubt on the legality) the sending arms to America. 
They disarmed the Welsh by statute, as you attempted (but still 
with more question on the legality) to disarm New England by 
an instruction. 1 They made an act to drag offenders from Wales 
into England for trial, as you have done (but with more hardship) 
with regard to America. By another act, where one of the par- 
ties was an Englishman, they ordained that his trial should be 
always by English. They made acts to restrain trade, as you do; 
and they prevented the Welsh from the use of fairs and markets, 
as you do the Americans from fisheries and foreign ports. In 
short, when the statute book was not quite so much swelled as it 
is now, you find no less than fifteen acts of penal regulation on 
the subject of Wales. 

1 Here we rub our hands — a fine body of precedents for the 
authority of Parliament and the use of it ! I admit it fully ; and 
pray add likewise to these precedents, that all the while Wales 
rid 2 this kingdom like an incubus y 3 that it was an unprofitable 
and oppressive burthen; and that an Englishman traveling in 
that country could not go six yards from the highroad without 
being murdered. 

j The march of the human mind is slow. Sir, it was not, until 
after two hundred years, discovered that by an eternal law Provi- 
dence had decreed vexation to violence, and poverty to rapine. 
Your ancestors did, however, at length open their eyes to the ill- 
husbandry of injustice. They found that the tyranny of a free 
people could, of all tyrannies, the least be endured ; and that laws 
made against a whole nation were not the most effectual methods 
for securing its obedience. Accordingly, in the twenty-seventh 
year of Henry VIII. the course was entirely altered. With a 
preamble stating the entire and perfect rights of the Crown of 
England, it gave to the Welsh all the rights and privileges of 
English subjects. A political order was established; the mili- 

1 That is, by an order to Gage, the commander in America. 

2 Old form of "rode." 

3 Nightmare. 



5 8 EDMUND BURKE ON CONCILIATION 



tlto 



tary power gave way to the civil ; the marches were turned into 
counties. But that a nation should have a right to English liber 
ties, and yet no share at all in the fundamental security of these 
liberties, — the - grant of their own property, — seemed a thing so 
incongruous, that eight years after, that is, in the thirty-fifth of 
that reign, a complete and not ill-proportioned representation by 
counties and boroughs was bestowed upon Wales by act of Parlia- 
ment. From that moment, as by a charm, the tumults subsided ; 
obedience was restored; peace, order, and civilization followed in 
the train of liberty. When the day-star of the English constitu- 
tion had arisen in their hearts, all was harmony within and 

without. 

— Simul alba naulis 
Stella refulsit, 
Deflnit sax is agitatus humor, 
Concidunt venti, fugiuntque nubes, 
Et minax {quod sic voluere) ponto 
Unda recumbit. 1 






I The very same year the county palatine 2 of Chester received 
the same relief from its oppressions, and the same remedy to its 
disorders. Before this time Chester was little less distempered 
than Wales. The inhabitants, without rights themselves, were 
fittest to destroy the rights of others ; and from thence Richard II. 3 
drew the standing army of archers, with which for a time he op- 
pressed England. The people of Chester applied to Parliament 
in a petition penned as I shall read it to you : 

1 " As soon as the clear-shining constellation has shone forth to the sailors, 
the troubled surge falls down from the rocks, the winds cease, the clouds van- 
ish, and the threatening waves subside in the sea, — because it was their will." 
— Horace, Ode to Augustus, i. 12 (Smart's trans.). 

2 A county palatine in England was so called because the owner, or holder, 
was entitled to special privileges and prerogatives, like a king in his palace. 
He appointed his own officers of justice, and could pardon crimes committed 
within his territory. There were three counties palatine in England — Lan- 
caster, Chester, and Durham, the two first-named in the eastern part, and the 
last in the northern. 

3 King of England from 1377 to 1399. 






WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 59 

o •*' To the king our sovereign lord, in most humble wise shown 
unto your excellent Majesty, the inhabitants of your Grace's 
county palatine of Chester : That where the said county palatine 
of Chester is and hath been always hitherto exempt, excluded and 
separated out and from your high court of Parliament, to have 
any knights and burgesses within the said court; by reason whereof 
the said inhabitants have hitherto sustained manifold disherisons, 1 
losses, and damages, as well in their lands, goods, and bodies, as 
in the good, civil, and politic governance and maintenance of the 
commonwealth of their said country : (2) And forasmuch as the 
said inhabitants have always hitherto been bound by the acts and' 
statutes made and ordained by your said Highness, and your 
most noble progenitors, by authority of the said court, as far forth 
as other counties, cities, and boroughs have been, that have had 
their knights and burgesses within your said court of Parliament, 
and yet have had neither knight ne 2 burgess there for the said 
county palatine ; the said inhabitants, for lack thereof, have been 
oftentimes touched and grieved with acts and statutes made within 
the said court, as well derogatory unto the most ancient jurisdic- 
tions, liberties, and privileges of your said county palatine, as pre- 
judicial unto the commonwealth, quietness, rest, and peace of 
your Grace's most bounden subjects inhabiting within the same." 

yUWhat did Parliament with this audacious address? Reject it 
as a libel ? Treat it as an affront to government ? Spurn it as a 
derogation from the rights of legislature ? Did they toss it over 
the table ? Did they burn it by the hands of the common hang- 
man ? They took the petition of grievance, all rugged as it was, 
without softening or temperament, unpurged of the original bitter- 
ness and indignation of complaint ; they made it the very pre- 
amble to their act of redress, and consecrated its principle to all 
ages in the sanctuary of legislation. 

Here is my third example. It was attended with the success 
of the two former. Chester, civilized as well as Wales, has dem- 
onstrated that freedom, and not servitude, is the cure of anarchy; 

1 Acts of disinheritance ; here it means deprivations. 2 Old form of " nor. " 



60 EDMUND BURKE ON CONCILIATION 

as religion, and not atheism, is the true remedy for superstition. 
Sir, this pattern of Chester was followed in the reign of Charles 
II. 1 with regard to the county palatine of Durham, which is my 
fourth example. This county had long lain out of the pale of 
free legislation. So scrupulously was the example of Chester 
followed, that the style of the preamble is nearly the same witl 
that of the Chester act; and, without affecting the abstract ex- 
tent of the authority of Parliament, it recognizes the equity of not 
suffering any considerable district, in which the British subjects mai 
act as a body, to be taxed without their own voice in the grant. 
i Now, if the doctrines of policy contained in these preambles, 
and the force of these examples in the acts of Parliament avail 
anything, what can be said against applying them with regard to 
America ? Are not the people of America as much Englishmen 
as the Welsh ? The preamble of the act of Henry VIII. says 
the Welsh speak a language no way resembling that of his Maj- 
esty's English subjects. Are the Americans not as numerous ? 
If we may trust the learned and accurate Judge Barrington's ac- 
count of North Wales, and take that as a standard to measure 
the rest, there is no comparison. The people cannot amount to 
above 200,000 — not a tenth part of the number in the colonies. 
Is America in rebellion ? Wales was hardly ever free from it. 
Have you attempted to govern America by penal statutes ? You 
made fifteen for Wales. But your legislative authority is perfect 
with regard to America; was it less perfect in Wales, Chester, and 
Durham ? But America is virtually represented. What ! Does 
the electric force of virtual representation more easily pass over 
the Atlantic than pervade Wales, which lies in your neighbor- 
hood; or than Chester and Durham, surrounded by abundance 
of representation that is actual and palpable ? But, Sir, your an- 
cestors thought this sort of virtual representation, however ample, 
to be totally insufficient for the freedom of the inhabitants of ter- 
ritories that are so near, and comparatively so inconsiderable. 
How, then, can I think it sufficient for those which are infinitely 
greater, and infinitely more remote ? 

1 King of England from 1660 to 1685. 



WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 61 

/You will now, Sir, perhaps imagine that I am on the point of 
proposing to you a scheme for a representation of the colonies in 
Parliament. Perhaps I might be inclined to entertain some such 
thought; but a great flood stops me in my course. Opposuit na- 
tural — I cannot remove the eternal barriers of the creation. 
The thing in that mode I do not know to be possible. As I 
meddle with no theory, I do not absolutely assert the impractica- 
bility of such a representation. But I do not see my way to it ; 
and those who have been more confident have not been more 
successful. However, the arm of public benevolence is not short- 
ened, and there are often several means to the same end. What 
nature has disjoined in one way, wisdom may unite in another. 
When we cannot give the benefit as we would wish, let us not re- 
fuse it altogether. If we cannot give the principal, let us find a 
substitute. But how ? Where ? What substitute ? 
< Fortunately, I am not obliged, for the ways and means of this 
substitute, to tax my own unproductive invention. I am not even 
obliged to go to the rich treasury of the fertile framers of imaginary 
commonwealths — not to the " Republic " of Plato 2 ; not to the 
" Utopia " of More 3 ; not to the " Oceana " of Harrington. 4 It is 
before me ; it is at my feet, 

And the dull swain 
Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon. 5 

1 "Nature has erected barriers." 

2 A great Greek philosopher, born about 429 B. c. He was a disciple of 
Socrates, whose teachings he gives us in his Dialogues. His Republic is a 
picture of an ideal state where the most perfect justice prevails. 

3 Sir Thomas More (1480-1535), an eminent philosopher and statesman. 
In 15 16 he produced his famous work, Utopia. The name is derived from 
a Greek word meaning " nowhere," and the book is a description of an imag- 
inary commonwealth, where the citizens had all things in common, and the 
administration of law and justice were perfect. By contrast he showed the 
evils of the then existing government in England. The adjective "Utopian" 
is now applied to any visionary and impracticable scheme of reform. 

4= James Harrington (1611-1677), an English writer, whose principal work, 
Oceana, a political allegory, describes an ideal republic supposed to repre- 
sent England. The project was generally considered highly impracticable. 

5 See Milton, Comus, lines 634,635, "Clouted shoon," i.e., hobnailed 
shoes. 



62 EDMUND BURKE ON CONCILIATION 



JtltU- 
ti, as 



I only wish you to recognize, for the theory, the ancient constitu 
tional policy of this kingdom with regard to representation 
that policy has been declared in acts of Parliament ; and, as to 
the practice, to return to that mode which an uniform experience 
has marked out to you as best, and in which you walked with 
security, advantage, and honor until the year 1763. 

My resolutions, therefore, mean to establish the equity and jus- 
tice of a taxation of America by grant, and not by imposition; 
to mark the legal competency of the colony assemblies for the 
support of their government in peace, and for public aids in time 
of war; to acknowledge that this legal competency has had a 
dutiful a?id beneficial exercise, and that experience has shown the 
benefit of their grants and the futility of parliamentary taxation 
as a method of supply. 

These solid truths compose six fundamental propositions. 
There are three more resolutions corollary to these. If you admit 
the first set, you can hardly reject the others. But if you admit 
the first, I shall be far from solicitous whether you accept or refuse 
the last. I think these six massive pillars will be of strength suffi- 
cient to support the temple of British concord. 1 I have no more 
doubt than I entertain of my existence that, if you admitted these, 
you would command an immediate peace, and, with but tolerable 
future management, a lasting obedience in America. I am not 
arrogant in this confident assurance. The propositions are all 
mere matters of fact ; and if they are such facts as draw irresistible 
conclusions even in the stating, this is the power of truth, and not 
any management of mine. 

Sir, I shall open the whole plan to you, together with such ob- 
servations on the motions as may tend to illustrate them where 
they may want explanation. The first is a resolution : " That 
the colonies and plantations of Great Britain in North America, 
consisting of fourteen separate governments, and containing two 
millions and upwards of free inhabitants, have not had the liberty 

1 An allusion to the Temple of Concord at Rome, built at the head of the 
Forum. The ruins of the latest building, which was erected by the Emperor 
Tiberius, may still be seen. 



WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 63 

and privilege of electing and sending any knights and burgesses, 
or others, to represent them in the high court of Parliament.'* 
This is a plain matter of fact, necessary to be laid down, and (ex- 
cepting the description) it is laid down in the language of the con- 
stitution ; it is taken nearly verbatim from acts of Parliament. 

The second is like unto the first : " That the said colonies and 
plantations have been liable to, and bounden by, several subsidies, 
payments, rates, and taxes, given and granted by Parliament, 
though the said colonies and plantations have not their knights 
and burgesses in the said high court of Parliament, of their own 
election, to represent the condition of their country; by lack 
whereof they have been oftentimes touched and grieved by sub- 
sidies given, granted, and assented to, in the said court, in a man- 
ner prejudicial to the commonwealth, quietness, rest, and peace 
of the subjects inhabiting within the same." 

Is this description too hot or too cold, too strong or too 
weak ? Does it arrogate too much to the supreme legislature ? 
Does it lean too much to the claims of the people? If it runs 
into any of these errors, the fault is not mine. It is the language 
of your own ancient acts of Parliament. 

Nee mens hie sermo est y sed qnce pr&cepit Ofelhis, 
Rusticus^ abnormis sapiens.' 1 

It is the genuine produce of the ancient, rustic, manly, home-bred 
sense of this country. I did not dare to rub off a particle of the 
venerable rust that rather adorns and preserves than destroys the 
metal. It would be a profanation to touch with a tool the stones 
which construct the sacred altar of peace. I w 7 ould not violate 
with modem polish the ingenuous and noble roughness of these 
truly constitutional materials. Above all things, I was resolved 
not to be guilty of tampering — the odious vice of restless and un- 
stable minds. I put my foot in the tracks of our forefathers, 
where I can neither wander nor stumble. Determining to fix 

1 " This is no doctrine of mine, but what Ofellus the peasant, a philosopher 
without rules, taught me." — Horace, Sat. ii. 2 (Smart's trans.). 



64 EDMUND BURKE ON CONCILIATION 

articles of peace, I was resolved not to be wise beyond what was 
written; I was resolved to use nothing else than the form of sound 
words, to let others abound in their own sense, and carefully to 
abstain from all expressions of my own. What the law has said, 
I say. In all things else I am silent. I have no organ but for 
her words. This, if it be not ingenious, I am sure is safe. 

There are indeed words expressive of grievance in this second 
resolution, which those who are resolved always to be in the right 
will deny to contain matter of fact, as applied to the present case, 
although Parliament thought them true with regard to the coun- 
ties of Chester and Durham. They will deny that the Americans 
were ever " touched and grieved " with the taxes. If they consider 
nothing in taxes but their weight as pecuniary impositions, there 
might be some pretense for this denial. But men may be sorely 
touched and deeply grieved in their privileges, as well as in their 
purses. Men may lose little in property by the act which takes 
away all their freedom. When a man is robbed of a trifle on the 
highway, it is not the twopence lost that constitutes the capi- 
tal outrage. This is not confined to privileges. Even ancient 
indulgences withdrawn, without offense on the part of those who 
enjoyed such favors, operate as grievances. 

But were the Americans, then, not touched and grieved by the 
taxes, in some measure, merely as taxes ? If so, why were they 
almost all either wholly repealed or exceedingly reduced ? Were 
they not touched and grieved even by the regulating duties of 
the sixth 1 of George II. ? 2 Else why were the duties first reduced 
to one third in 1764, and afterwards to a third of that third in 
the year 1766 ? Were they not touched and grieved by the Stamp 
Act ? 3 I shall say they were, until that tax is revived. Were 
they not touched and grieved by the duties of 1767, which were 

1 Supply " act." 

2 King of England from 1727 to 1 760. 

3 A bill proposed in Parliament by George Grenville in 1765, by which all 
paper bearing the government stamp in America was to be subject to a duty, 
and all legal documents must be written on such paper. r lhe American col- 
onies refused to submit to this duty, and the act was repealed in 1766. 



WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 65 

likewise repealed, and which Lord Hillsborough tells you (for 
the ministry) were laid contrary to the true principle of com- 
merce ? Is not the assurance given, by that noble person, to 
the colonies of a resolution to lay no more taxes on them, an 
admission that taxes would touch and grieve them? Is not 
the resolution of the noble lord in the blue riband, now stand- 
ing on your journals, the strongest of all proofs that parliamen- 
tary subsidies really touched and grieved them ? Else why 
all these changes, modifications, repeals, assurances, and reso- 
lutions ? 

The next proposition is : " That, from the distance of the said 
colonies, and from other circumstances, no method hath hitherto 
been devised for procuring a representation in Parliament for the 
said colonies." This is an assertion of a fact. I go no further on 
the paper, though, in my private judgment, an useful representa- 
tion is impossible. I am sure it is not desired by them, nor ought 
it be perhaps by us ; but I abstain from opinions. 

The fourth resolution is: " That each of the said colonies hath 
within itself a body, chosen in part, or in the whole, by the free- 
men, freeholders, or other free inhabitants thereof, commonly 
called the general assembly, or general court; with powers le- 
gally to raise, levy, and assess, according to the several usage of 
such colonies, duties and taxes towards defraying all sorts of pub- 
lic services. 

This competence in the colony assemblies is certain. It is 
proved by the whole tenor of their acts of supply in all the assem- 
blies, in which the constant style of granting is, " an aid to his 
Majesty;" and acts granting to the Crown have regularly, for 
near a century, passed the public offices without dispute. Those 
who have been pleased paradoxically to deny this right, holding 
that none but the British Parliament can grant to the Crown, are 
wished to look to what is done, not only in the colonies, but in 
Ireland, in one uniform unbroken tenor every session. Sir, I am 
surprised that this doctrine should come from some of the law 
servants of the Crown. I say, that if the Crown could be 

responsible, his Majesty, but certainly the ministers, and even 
5 



66 EDMUND BURKE ON CONCILIATION 

these law officers themselves through whose hands the acts pass 
biennially in Ireland, or annually in the colonies, are in an habit- 
ual course of committing impeachable offenses. What habitual 
offenders have been ail presidents of the council, all secretaries of 
state, all first lords of trade, all attorneys, and all solicitors general ! 
However, they are safe, as no one impeaches them ; and there is 
no ground of charge against them, except in their own un- 
founded theories. 

The fifth resolution is also a resolution of fact : " That the said 
general assemblies, general courts, or other bodies legally qualified 
as aforesaid, have at sundry times freely granted several large 
subsidies and public aids for his Majesty's service, according to 
their abilities, when required thereto by letter from one of his 
Majesty's principal secretaries of state ; and that their right to 
grant the same, and their cheerfulness and sufficiency in the said 
grants, have been at sundry times acknowledged by Parliament." 
To say nothing of their great expenses in the Indian wars ; and 
not to take their exertion in foreign ones, so high as the supplies 
in the year 1695 ; not to go back to their public contributions in 
the year 17 10 : I shall begin to travel only where the journals give 
me light, resolving to deal in nothing but fact, authenticated by 
parliamentary record, and to build myself wholly on that solid 
basis. 

On the 4th of April, 1748, a committee of this House came to 
the following resolution : 

" Resolved, 
"That it is the opinion of this committee, That it is just and 
reasonable that the several provinces and colonies of Massachu- 
setts Bay, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, be 
reimbursed the expenses they have been at in taking and securing 
to the Crown of Great Britain the island of Cape Breton and its 
dependencies." 

These expenses were immense for such colonies. They were 
above ^200,000 sterling — money first raised and advanced on 
their public credit. 



WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 67 

On the 28th of January, 1756, a message from the king 1 came 
to us, to this effect : 

" His Majesty, being sensible of the zeal and vigor with which 
his faithful subjects of certain colonies in North America have 
exerted themselves in defense of his Majesty's just rights and 
possessions, recommends it to this House to take the same into 
their consideration, and to enable his Majesty to give them such 
assistance as may be a proper reward and encouragement''' 

On the 3d of February, 1756, the House came to a suitable 
resolution, expressed in words nearly the same as those of the 
message ; but with the further addition, that the money then voted 
was as an encouragement to the colonies to exert themselves with 
vigor. It will not be necessary to go through all the testimonies 
which your own records have given to the truth of my resolutions, 
I will only refer you to the places in the journals : 

Vol. xxvii. — 1 6th and 19th May, 1757. 

Vol. xxviii. — June 1st, 1758 — April 26th and 30th, 1759 — 

March 26th and 31st, and April 28th, 1760 — 

Jan. 9th and 20th, 1761. 
Vol. xxix. — Jan. 22a and 26th, 1762 — March 14th and 

17th, 1763. 

Sir, here is the repeated acknowledgment of Parliament, that 
the colonies not only gave, but gave to satiety. This nation has 
formally acknowledged two things : first, that the colonies had 
gone beyond their abilities, -Parliament having thought it neces- 
sary to reimburse them ; secondly, that they had acted legally and 
laudably in their grants of money, and their maintenance of 
troops, since the compensation is expressly given as reward and 
encouragement. Reward is not bestowed for acts that are unlaw- 
ful; and encouragement is not held out to things that deserve 
reprehension. My resolution, therefore, does nothing more than 
collect into one proposition, what is scattered through your jour- 
nals. I give you nothing but your own ; and you cannot refuse 

1 George II. was then king. 



68 EDMUND BURKE ON CONCILIATION % 

in the gross, what you have so often acknowledged in detail. 
The admission of this, which will be so honorable to them and 
to you, will, indeed, be mortal, 1 to all the miserable stories by 
which the passions of the misguided people have been engaged in 
an unhappy system. The people heard, indeed, from the begin- 
ning of these disputes, one thing continually dinned in their ears: 
that reason and justice demanded that the Americans, who paid 
no taxes, should be compelled to contribute. How did that fact 
of their paying nothing stand, when the taxing system began ? 
When Mr. Grenville 2 began to form his system of American 
revenue, he stated in this House that the colonies were then in 
debt two million six hundred thousand pounds sterling money, 
and was of opinion they would discharge that debt in four years. 
On this state, those untaxed people were actually subject to the 
payment of taxes to the amount of six hundred and fifty thousand 
a year. In fact, however, Mr. Grenville was mistaken. The 
funds given for sinking the debt did not prove quite so ample as 
both the colonies and he expected. The calculation was too san- 
guine ; the reduction was not completed till some years after, and 
at different times in different colonies. However, the taxes after 
the war continued too great to bear any addition, with prudence 
or propriety ; and when the burthens imposed in consequence of 
former requisitions were discharged, our tone became too high to 
resort again to requisition. No colony, since that time, ever has 
had any requisition whatsoever made to it. 

We see the sense of the Crown, and the sense of Parliament, 
on the productive nature of a revenue by grant. Now search the 
same journals for the produce of the revenue by imposition — 
Where is it ? Let us know the volume and the page. What is 
the gross, what is the net produce ? To what service is it ap- 

1 Fatal. 

2 Hon. George Grenville (1712-1770), who held the position of Prime Min- 
ister of England from 1763 to 1 765, is noted as being the author of the Stamp 
Act* He was an able man, but self-willed and dictatorial, and the king, who 
at first liked him because of his high-handed policy with the colonies, came 
soon to hate him, and dismissed him from the position of his chief adviser. 



WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 69 

plied ? How have you appropriated its surplus ? What, can 
none of the many skillful index-makers that we are now employ- 
ing find any trace of it ? Well, let them and that rest together. 
But are the journals, which say nothing of the revenue, as silent 
on the discontent ? Oh, no ! a child may find it. It is the mel- 
ancholy burthen and blot of every page. 

I think then I am, from those journals, justified in the sixth 
and last resolution, which is : " That it hath been found by ex- 
perience, that the manner of granting the said supplies and aids, 
by the said general assemblies, hath been more agreeable to the 
said colonies, and more beneficial, and conducive to the public 
service, than the mode of giving and granting aids in Parliament, 
to be raised and paid in the said colonies." 

This makes the whole of the fundamental part of the plan. 
The conclusion is irresistible. You cannot say that you were 
driven by any necessity to an exercise of the utmost rights of 
legislature. You cannot assert that you took on yourselves the 
task of imposing colony taxes, from the want of another legal 
body that is competent to the purpose of supplying the exigencies 
of the state without wounding the prejudices of the people. 
Neither is it true that the body so qualified, and having that 
competence, had neglected the duty. 

The question now, on all this accumulated matter, is: Whether 
you will choose to abide by a profitable experience, or a mis- 
chievous theory; whether you choose to build on imagination, or 
fact ; whether you prefer enjoyment, or hope ; satisfaction in your 
subjects, or discontent ? 

If these propositions are accepted, everything which has been 
made to enforce a contrary system must, I take it for granted, 
fall along with it. On that ground, I have drawn the following 
resolution, which, when it comes to be moved, will naturally be 
divided in a proper manner : " That it may be proper to repeal an 
act, made in the seventh year of the reign of his present Majesty, 
intituled: 1 An act for granting certain duties in the British 
colonies and plantations in America ; for allowing a drawback 2 of 
1 Another spelling of " entitled." 2 Refund of a duty. 



70 EDMUND BURKE ON CONCILIATION 

the duties of customs upon the exportation from this kingdom, of 
coffee and cocoanuts of the produce of the said colonies or plan- 
tations; for discontinuing the drawbacks payable on China earthen- 
ware exported to America; and for more effectually preventing 
the clandestine running of goods in the said colonies and plan- 
tations. — And that it may be proper to repeal an act, made in 
the fourteenth year of the reign of his present Majesty, intituled: 
An act to discontinue, in such manner, and for such time, as are 
therein mentioned, the landing and discharging, lading or shipping, 
of goods, wares, and merchandise, at the town, and within the 
harbor, of Boston, in the province of Massachusetts Bay, in North 
America. — And that it may be proper to repeal an act, made in 
the fourteenth year of the reign of his present Majesty, intituled: 
An act for the impartial administration of justice, in the cases of 
persons questioned for any acts done by them, in the execution of 
the law, or for the suppression of riots and tumults, in the prov- 
ince of Massachusetts Bay, in New England. — And that it may be 
proper to repeal an act, made in the fourteenth year of the reign of 
his present Majesty, intituled : An act for the better regulating the 
government of the province of Massachusetts Bay, in New Eng- 
land. — And, also, that it may be proper to explain and amend an 
act, made in the thirty-fifth year of the reign of King Henry 
VIII., intituled : An act for the trial of treasons committed out 
of the king's dominions." 

I wish, Sir, to repeal the Boston Port Bill, 1 because (indepen- 
dently of the dangerous precedent of suspending the rights of the 
subject during the king's pleasure) it was passed, as I apprehend, 
with less regularity, and on more partial principles, than it ought. 
The corporation of Boston was not heard before it was condemned. 
Other towns, full as guilty as she was, have not had their ports 
blocked up. Even the restraining bill of the present session does 
not go to the length of the Boston Port Act. The same ideas of 
prudence which induced you not to extend equal punishment to 

1 A bill proposed by Lord North in 1774, prohibiting the landing or ship- 
ping of goods at Boston, as a punishment for the rebellion of the people of 
Boston against the tax on tea. 



WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 71 

equal guilt, even when you were punishing, induced me, who 
mean not to chastise, but to reconcile, to be satisfied with the 
punishment already partially inflicted. 

Ideas of prudence and accommodation to circumstances pre- 
vent you from taking away the charters of Connecticut and Rhode 
Island, as you have taken away that of Massachusetts colony, 
though the Crown has far less power in the two former prov- 
inces than it enjoyed in the latter; and though the abuses have 
been full as great and as flagrant in the exempted as in the pun- 
ished. The same reasons of prudence and accommodation have 
weight with me in restoring the charter of Massachusetts Bay. Be- 
sides, Sir, the act which changes the charter of Massachusetts is 
in many particulars so exceptionable, that if I did not wish abso- 
lutely to repeal, I would by all means desire to alter it ; as several 
of its provisions tend to the subversion of all public and private 
justice. Such, among others, is the power in the governor to 
change the sheriff at his pleasure, and to make a new returning 
officer for every special cause. It is shameful to behold such a 
regulation standing among English laws. 

The act for bringing persons accused of committing murder un- 
der the orders of government to England for trial is but tem- 
porary. That act has calculated the probable duration of our 
quarrel with the colonies, and is accommodated to that supposed 
duration. I would hasten the happy moment of reconciliation, 
and therefore must, on my principle, get rid of that most justly 
obnoxious act. 

The act of Henry VIII. , for the trial of treasons, I do not mean 
to take away, but to confine it to its proper bounds and original 
intention; to make it expressly for trial of treasons (and the 
greatest treasons may be committed) in places where the jurisdic- 
tion of the Crown does not extend. 

Having guarded the privileges of local legislature, I would next 
secure to the colonies a fair and unbiased judicature ; for which 
purpose, Sir, I propose the following resolution : " That, from 
the time when the general assembly or general court of any colony 
or plantation in North America shall have appointed by act of 



72 EDMUND BURKE ON CONCILIATION 

assembly, duly confirmed, a settled salary to the offices of the 
chief justice and other judges of the superior courts, it may be 
proper that the said chief justice and other judges of the superior 
courts of such colony shall hold his and their office and offices 
during their good behavior; and shall not be removed therefrom, 
but when the said removal shall be adjudged by his Majesty in 
council, upon a hearing on complaint from the general assembly, 
or on a complaint from the governor, or council, or the house of 
representatives, severally, or of the colony in which the said chief 
justice and other judges have exercised the said offices." 

The next resolution relates to the courts of admiralty. It is 
this : " That it may be proper to regulate the courts of admiralty, 
or vice-admiralty, authorized by the fifteenth chapter of the fourth 
of George III., in such a manner as to make the same more 
commodious to those who sue, or are sued, in the said courts, and to 
provide for the more decent maintenance of the judges in the same." 

These courts I do not wish to take away ; they are in themselves 
proper establishments. This court is one of the capital securities 
of the Act of Navigation. 1 The extent of its jurisdiction, indeed, 
has been increased ; but this is altogether as proper, and is indeed 
on many accounts more eligible, where new powers were wanted, 
than a court absolutely new. But courts incommodiously situated 
in effect deny justice, and a court partaking in the fruits of its own 
condemnation is a robber. The congress complain, and complain 
justly, of this grievance. 

These are the three consequential propositions. I have thought 
of two or three more ; but they come rather too near detail and 
to the province of executive government, which I wish Parliament 
always to superintend, never to assume. If the first six are 
granted, congruity will carry the latter three. If not, the things 
that remain unrepealed will be, I hope, rather unseemly encum- 
brances on the building than very materially detrimental to its 
strength und stability. 

1 This act prevented foreign ships from trading with English colonies, and 
only permitted trade with England in English ships or ships of the country 
supplying the merchandise carried. 



WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 73 

Here, Sir, I should close; but I plainly perceive some objec- 
tions remain, which I ought, if possible, to remove. The first 
will be that, in resorting to the doctrine of our ancestors, as con- 
tained in the preamble to the Chester act, I prove too much : that 
the grievance from a want of representation, stated in that pre- 
amble, goes to the whole of legislation as well as to taxation ; 
and that the colonies, grounding themselves upon that doctrine, 
will apply it to all parts of legislative authority. 

To this objection, with all possible deference and humility, and 
wishing as little as any man living to impair the smallest particle 
of our supreme authority, I answer, that the words are the words 
of Parliament, and not mine ; and that all false and inconclusive 
inferences drawn from them are not mine; for I heartily disclaim 
any such inference. I have chosen the words of an act of Parlia- 
ment which Mr. Grenville, surely a tolerably zealous and very 
judicious advocate for the sovereignty of Parliament, formerly 
moved to have read at your table in confirmation of his tenets. 
It is true that Lord Chatham 1 considered these preambles as de- 
claring strongly in favor of his opinions. He was a no less pow- 
erful advocate for the privileges of the Americans. Ought I not 
from hence to presume, that these preambles are as favorable as 
possible to both when properly understood ; favorable both to the 
rights of Parliament and to the privilege of the dependencies of 
this Crown ? But, Sir, the object of grievance in my resolution 
I have not taken from the Chester, but from the Durham act, 
which confines the hardship of want of representation to the case 
of subsidies ; and which therefore falls in exactly with the case of 
the colonies. But whether the unrepresented counties were de 
jure, 2 or de facto, 3 bound, the preambles do not accurately dis- 

1 William Pitt (1 708-1 778), perhaps the greatest of English statesmen. He 
was distinguished by great insight and breadth of view in political matters, 
and, previous to becoming Earl of Chatham, was almost worshiped by the 
English, people, who called him the "Great Commoner." By accepting a 
peerage he sacrificed his popularity to a great extent. He was an advocate 
of greater freedom for the colonies, and vigorously opposed the Stamp Act. 

2 Literally, " from the law " ; hence, rightly. 
s Literally, " from the fact " ; hence, really. 



74 EDMUND BURKE ON CONCILIATION 

tinguish, nor indeed was it necessary; for, whether de jure or de 
facto, the legislature thought the exercise of the power of taxing, 
as of right, or as of fact without right, equally a grievance and 
equally oppressive. 

I do not know that the colonies have, in any general way, or 
in any cool hour, gone much beyond the demand of immunity in 
relation to taxes. It is not fair to judge of the temper or disposi- 
tions of any man, or any set of men, when they are composed and 
at rest, from their conduct, or their expressions, in a state of dis- 
turbance and irritation. It is, besides, a very great mistake to 
imagine that mankind follow up practically any speculative prin- 
ciple, either of government or of freedom, as far as it will go in 
argument and logical illation. 

We Englishmen stop very short of the principles upon which 
we support any given part of our constitution, or even the whole 
of it together. I could easily, if I had not already tired you, give 
you very striking and convincing instances of it. This is nothing 
but what is natural and proper. All government, indeed every 
human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent 
act, is founded on compromise and barter. We balance incon- 
veniences ; we give and take ; we remit some rights that we may 
enjoy others; and we choose rather to be happy citizens than 
subtle disputants. As we must give away some natural liberty 
to enjoy civil advantages, so we must sacrifice some civil liber- 
ties for the advantages to be derived from the communion and 
fellowship of a great empire. But, in alFfair dealings, the thing 
bought must bear some proportion to the purchase paid. None 
will barter away the immediate jewel of his soul. 1 Though a 
great house is apt to make slaves haughty, yet it is purchasing a 
part of the artificial importance of a great empire too dear to 
pay for it all essential rights, and all the intrinsic dignity of 
human nature. None of us who would not risk his life rather 
than fall under a government purely arbitrary! But although 
there are some amongst us who think our constitution wants 
many improvements to make it a complete system of liberty, 
1 See Shakespeare, Othello, act iii., sc. 3. 



WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 75 

perhaps none who are of that opinion would think it right to 
aim at such improvement by disturbing his country and risking 
everything that is dear to him. In every arduous enterprise we 
consider what we are to lose as well as what we are to gain ; and 
the more and better stake of liberty every people possess, the less 
they will hazard in a vain attempt to make it more. These are 
the cords of man. 1 Man acts from adequate motives relative to 
his interest, and not on metaphysical speculations. Aristotle, 2 
the great master of reasoning, cautions us, and with great weight 
and propriety, against this species of delusive geometrical accu- 
racy in moral arguments as the most fallacious of all sophistry. 

The Americans will have no interest contrary to the grandeur 
and glory of England, when they are not oppressed by the weight 
of it; and they will rather be inclined to respect the acts of a su- 
perintending legislature, when they see them the acts of that 
power, which is itself the security, not the rival, of their secondary 
importance. In this assurance my mind most perfectly acquiesces, 
and I confess I feel not the least alarm from the discontents which 
are to arise from putting people at their ease; nor do I apprehend 
the destruction of this empire from giving, by an act of free grace 
and indulgence, to two millions of my fellow citizens, some share 
of those rights upon which I have always been taught to value 
myself. 

It is said, indeed, that this power of granting, vested in Ameri- 
can assemblies, would dissolve the unity of the empire; which 
was preserved entire, although Wales and Chester and Durham 
were added to it. Truly, Mr. Speaker, I do not know what this 
unity means; nor has it ever been heard of, that I know, in the 
constitutional policy of this country. The very idea of subordina- 
tion of parts excludes this notion of simple and undivided unity. 
England is the head ; but she is not the head and the members 
too. Ireland has ever had from the beginning a separate, but not 
an independent, legislature ; which, far from distracting, promoted 

1 "The cords of man," i.e., the motives which govern men. See Hoseaxi. 4: 
" I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love." 

2 A great Greek philosopher of the fourth century B. c. 



7 6 EDMUND BURKE ON CONCILIATION 

the union of the whole. Everything was sweetly and harmoniously 
disposed through both islands for the conservation of English do- 
minion and the communication of English liberties. I do not 
see that the same principles might not be carried into twenty isl- 
ands, and with the same good effect. This is my model with re- 
gard to America, as far as the internal circumstances of the two 
countries are the same. I know no other unity of this empire 
than I can draw from its example during these periods, when it 
seemed to my poor understanding more united than it is now, or 
than it is likely to be by the present methods. 

But since I speak of these methods, I recollect, Mr. Speaker, 
almost too late, that I promised before I finished to say something 
of the proposition of the noble lord x on the floor, which has been 
so lately received, and stands on your journals. I must be deeply 
concerned whenever it is my misfortune to continue a difference 
with the majority of this House. But as the reasons for that dif- 
ference are my apology for thus troubling you, suffer me to state 
them in a very few words. I shall compress them into as small a 
body as I possibly can, having already debated that matter at 
large when the question was before the committee. 

First, then, I cannot admit that proposition of a ransom by 
auction, because it is a mere project. It is a thing new, unheard 
of, supported by no experience, justified by no analogy, without 
example of our ancestors or root in the constitution. It is neither 
regular parliamentary taxation, nor colony grant. Experimentum 
in corpore vili 2 is a good rule, which will ever make me adverse 
to any trial of experiments on what is certainly the most valuable 
of all subjects — the peace of this empire. 

Secondly, it is an experiment which must be fatal in the end to 
our constitution. For what is it but a scheme for taxing the col- 
onies in the antechamber of the noble lord and his successors ? 
To settle the quotas and proportions in this House is clearly im- 
possible. You, Sir, may flatter yourself you shall sit a state auc- 
tioneer, with your hammer in your hand, and knock down to each 

1 The allusion is to Lord North. 

2 " Experiment should be made upon a worthless subject." 



WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 77 

colony as it bids. But to settle (on the plan laid down by the no- 
ble lord) the true proportional payment for four or five and twenty 
governments, according to the absolute and the relative wealth 
of each, and according to the British proportion of wealth and 
burthen, is a wild and chimerical notion. This new taxation must, 
therefore, come in by the back door of the constitution. Each 
quota must be brought to this House ready formed; you can nei- 
ther add nor alter. You must register it. You can do nothing 
further. For on what grounds can you deliberate either before or 
after the proposition ? You cannot hear the counsel for all these 
provinces, quarreling each on its own quantity of payment, and its 
proportion to others. If you should attempt it, the committee of 
provincial ways and means, or by whatever other name it will de- 
light to be called, must swallow up all the time of Parliament. 

Thirdly, it does not give satisfaction to the complaint of the 
colonies. They complain that they are taxed without their con- 
sent; you answer that you will fix the sum at which they shall be 
taxed. That is, you give them the very grievance for the remedy. 
You tell them, indeed, that you will leave the mode to themselves. 
I really beg pardon: it gives me pain to mention it; but you 
must be sensible that you will not perform this part of the com- 
pact. For, suppose the colonies were to lay the duties, which 
furnished their contingent, upon the importation of your manufac- 
tures; you know you would never suffer such a tax to be laid. 
You know, too, that you would not suffer many other modes of 
taxation. So that when you come to explain yourself, it will be 
found that you will neither leave to themselves the quantum nor 
the mode, nor indeed anything. The whole is delusion from one 
end to the other. 

Fourthly, this method of ransom by auction, unless it be uni- 
versally accepted, will plunge you into great and inextricable 
difficulties. In what year of our Lord are the proportions of 
payments to be settled ? To say nothing of the impossibility 
that colony agents should have general powers of taxing the colo- 
nies at their discretion, consider, I implore you, that the commu- 
nication by special messages and orders between these agents 



7 8 EDMUND BURKE ON CONCILIATION 

and their constituents on each variation of the case, when the 
parties come to contend together and to dispute on their relative 
proportions, will be a matter of delay, perplexity, and confusion 
that never can have an end. 

If all the colonies do not appear at the outcry, what is the con- 
dition of those assemblies who offer by themselves or their agents 
to tax themselves up to your ideas of their proportion ? The re- 
fractory colonies, who refuse all composition, will remain taxed 
only to your old impositions, which, however grievous in prin- 
ciple, are trifling as to production. The obedient colonies in this 
scheme are heavily taxed; the refractory remain unburthened. 
What will you do ? Will you lay new and heavier taxes by Par- 
liament on the disobedient ? Pray consider in what way you can 
do it. You are perfectly convinced that, in the way of taxing, 
you can do nothing but at the ports. Now suppose it is Virginia 
that refuses to appear at your auction, while Maryland and North 
Carolina bid handsomely for their ransom and are taxed to your 
quota, how will you put these colonies on a par? Will you tax 
the tobacco of Virginia ? If you do, you give its death wound to 
your English revenue at home, and to one of the very greatest 
articles of your own foreign trade. If you tax the import of that 
rebellious colony, what do you tax but your own manufactures, or 
the goods of some other obedient and already well-taxed colony ? 

Who has said one word on this labyrinth 1 of detail which be- 
wilders you more and more as you enter into it ? Who has pre- 
sented, who can present, you with a clue to lead you out of it ? 
I think, Sir, it is impossible that you should not recollect that the 
colony bounds are so implicated in one another (you know it by 
your other experiments in the bill for prohibiting the New Eng- 
land fishery), that you can lay no possible restraints on almost 
any of them which may not be presently eluded, if you do not 
confound the innocent with the guilty, and burthen those whom, 

1 The allusion here is to the labyrinth at Crete in which the monster 
Minotaur was kept. When Theseus entered this labyrinth to slay the Mino- 
taur, Ariadne, the daughter of King Minos, gave him as a clew a skein of 
thread, by means of which he found his way out. 



WITH THE AMERICAN COLOXIES. 79 

upon every principle, you ought to exonerate. He must be 
grossly ignorant of America who thinks that, without falling into 
this confusion of all rules of equity and policy, you can restrain 
any single colony, especially Virginia and Maryland, the central 
and most important of them all. 

Let it also be considered that, either in the present confusion 
you settle a permanent contingent which will and must be trifling, 
and then you have no effectual revenue; or you change the 
quota at every exigency, and then on every new repartition you 
will have a new quarrel. 

Reflect, besides, that when you have fixed a quota for every 
colony, you have not provided for prompt and punctual payment. 
Suppose one, two, five, ten years' arrears. You cannot issue a 
treasury extent * against the failing colony. You must make new 
Boston Port Bills, new restraining laws, new acts for dragging 
men to England for trial. You must send out new fleets, new 
armies. All is to begin again ! From this day forward the empire 
is never to know an hour's tranquillity. An intestine fire will be 
kept alive in the bowels of the colonies, which one time or other 
must consume this whole empire. I allow, indeed, that the empire 
of Germany raises her revenue and her troops by quotas and con- 
tingents ; but the revenue of the empire and the army of the 
empire is the worst revenue and the worst army in the world. 

Instead of a standing revenue, you will, therefore, have a per- 
petual quarrel. Indeed the noble lord, who proposed this pro- 
ject of a ransom by auction, seemed himself to be of that opinion. 
His project was rather designed for breaking the union of the 
colonies than for establishing a revenue. He confessed he appre- 
hended that his proposal would not be to their taste. I say, this 
scheme of disunion seems to be at the bottom of the project; for 
I will not suspect that the noble lord meant nothing but merely 
to delude the nation by an airy phantom which he never intended 
to realize. But whatever his views may be, as I propose the 
peace and union of the colonies as the very foundation of my 

1 "Treasury extent," i.e., an order by which the lands and goods of a 
debtor to the Crown are seized for payment. 



80 EDMUND BURKE ON CONCILIATION 

plan, it cannot accord with one whose foundation is perpetual 
discord. 

Compare the two. This I offer to give you is plain and sim- 
ple; the other, full of perplexed and intricate mazes. This is 
mild; that harsh. This is found by experience effectual for its 
purposes ; the other is a new project. This is universal ; the other 
calculated for certain colonies only. This is immediate in its 
conciliatory operation ; the other remote, contingent, full of haz- 
ard. Mine is what becomes the dignity of a ruling people — gra- 
tuitous, unconditional, and not held out as matter of bargain and 
sale. I have done my duty in proposing it to you. I have, in- 
deed, tired you by a long discourse ; but this is the misfortune of 
those to whose influence nothing will be conceded, and who must 
win every inch of their ground by argument. You have heard 
me with goodness. May you decide with wisdom! For my 
part, I feel my mind greatly disburthened by what I have done to- 
day. I have been the less fearful of trying your patience, be- 
cause on this subject I mean to spare it altogether in future. I 
have this comfort, that, in every stage of the American affairs, I 
have steadily opposed the measures that have produced the con- 
fusion, and may bring on the destruction of this empire. I now 
go so far as to risk a proposal of my own. If I cannot give 
peace to my country, I give it to my conscience. 

But what (says the financier) is peace to us without money ? 
Your plan gives us no revenue. No ! But it does ; for it se- 
cures to the subject the power of refusal — the first of all revenues. 
Experience is a cheat, and fact a liar, if this power in the subject 
of proportioning his grant, or of not granting at all, has not 
been found the richest mine of revenue ever discovered by the 
skill or by the fortune of man. It does not indeed vote you 
,£152,750 : n : 2^, nor any other paltry limited sum. But it 
gives the strong box itself, the fund, the bank, from whence only 
revenues can arise amongst a people sensible of freedom : Posita 
luditur area. 1 

1 "The strong box itself is staked in playing." See Juvenal, Sat. i. 
An allusion to excess in gambling. 



WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. Si 

Cannot you in England ; cannot you at this time of day; can- 
not you, a House of Commons, trust to the principle which has 
raised so mighty a revenue, and accumulated a debt of near 
140 millions in this country ? Is this principle to be true in Eng- 
land, and false everywhere else ? Is it not true in Ireland ? Has 
it not hitherto been true in the colonies ? Why should you pre- 
sume that, in any country, a body duly constituted for any func- 
tion, will neglect to perform its duty, and abdicate its trust ? Such 
a presumption would go against all governments in all modes. 
But, in truth, this dread of penury of supply, from a free assembly, 
has no foundation in nature. For first observe that, besides the 
desire which all men have, naturally, of supporting the honor of 
their own government, that sense of dignity and that security to 
property, which ever attend freedom, have a tendency to increase 
the stock of the free community. Most may be taken where most 
is accumulated. And what is the soil or climate where experience 
has not uniformly proved, that the voluntary flow of heaped-up 
plenty, bursting from the weight of its own rich luxuriance, has 
ever run with a more copious stream of revenue than could be 
squeezed from the dry husks of oppressed indigence, by the strain- 
ing of all the politic machinery in the world ? 

Next, we know that parties must ever exist in a free country. 
We know, too, that the emulations of such parties, their contra- 
dictions, their reciprocal necessities, their hopes, and their fears, 
must send them all in their turns to him that holds the balance of 
the state. The parties are the gamesters ; but government keeps 
the table, and is sure to be the winner in the end. When this 
game is played, I really think it is more to be feared that the 
people will be exhausted than that government will not be 
supplied. Whereas, whatever is got by acts of absolute power ill- 
obeyed because odious, or by contracts ill-kept because con- 
strained, will be narrow, feeble, uncertain, and precarious. 

Ease would recant 
Vows made in pain, as violent and void. 1 

1 See Milton, Paradise Lost, Book iv., lines 96, 97. 



82 EDMUND BURKE ON CONCILIATION 

I, for one, protest against compounding our demands; I declare 
against compounding, for a poor, limited sum, the immense, ever- 
growing, eternal debt which is due to generous government from 
protected freedom. And so may I speed in the great object I 
propose to you ; as I think it would not only be an act of injustice, 
but would be the worst economy in the world, to compel the colo- 
nies to a sum certain, either in the way of ransom or in the way 
of compulsory compact. 

But to clear up my ideas on this subject. A revenue from 
America transmitted hither! Do not delude yourselves; you 
never can receive it. No, not a shilling ! We have experience 
that from remote countries it is not to be expected. If, when you 
attempted to extract revenue from Bengal, you were obliged to 
return in loan what you had taken in imposition, what can you 
expect from North America ? For certainly, if ever there was a 
country qualified to produce wealth, it is India ; or an institution 
fit for the transmission, it is the East India Company. America 
has none of these aptitudes. 

If America gives you taxable objects, on which you lay your 
duties here, and gives you, at the same time, a surplus by a 
foreign sale of her commodities, to pay the duties on these objects 
which you tax at home, 1 she has performed her part to the Brit- 
ish revenue. But with regard to her own internal establishments, 
she may, I doubt not she will, contribute in moderation. I say 
in moderation; for she ought not to be permitted to exhaust her- 
self. She ought to be reserved to a war ; the weight of which, 
with the enemies that we are most likely to have, must be con- 
siderable in her quarter of the globe. There she may serve you, 
and serve you essentially. 

For that service, for all service, whether of revenue, trade, or 
empire, my trust is in her interest in the British constitution. My 
hold of the colonies is in the close affection which grows from 

1 According to the Navigation Laws, American products could not be ex- 
ported to foreign countries direct, but had first to be sent to England, thence 
to be reexported. Duties were laid upon them in England, which were more 
than covered by Ihe profits of foreign sale. 






WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. S3 

common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and 
equal protection. These are ties, which, though light as air, are as 
strong as links of iron. Let the colonies always keep the idea 
of their civil rights associated with your government; they will 
cling and grapple to you, and no force under heaven will be of 
power to tear them from their allegiance. But let it be once 
understood that your government may be one thing and their 
privileges another, that these two things may exist without any 
mutual relation; the cement is gone, the cohesion is loosened, 
and everything hastens to decay and dissolution. 

As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority 
of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple con- 
secrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of 
England worship freedom they will turn their faces towards you. 
The more they multiply, the more friends you will have; the more 
ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will be their obedience. 
Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every 
soil. They may have it from Spain, they may have it from Prus- 
sia. But, until you become lost to all feeling of your true interest 
and your natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but 
you. This is the commodity of price, of which you have the mo- 
nopoly. This is the true act of navigation, which binds to you the 
commerce of the colonies, and through them secures to you the 
wealth of the world. Deny them this participation of freedom, 
and you break that sole bond, which originally made, and must 
still preserve, the unity of the empire. 

Do not entertain so weak an imagination as that your registers 
and your bonds, your affidavits and your sufferances, your cockets 
and your clearances, are what form the great securities of your 
commerce. Do not dream that your letters of office, and your in- 
structions, and your suspending clauses, are the things that hold 
together the great contexture of the mysterious whole. These 
things do not make your government. Dead instruments, passive 
tools as they are, it is the spirit of the English communion that 
gives all their life and efficacy to them. It is the spirit of the 
English constitution, which, infused through the mighty mass, 1 er- 




84 EDMUND BURKE ON CONCILIATION 

vades, feeds, unites, invigorates, vivifies every part of the empire, 
even down to the minutest member. 

Is it not the same virtue which does everything for us here in 
England ? Do you imagine, then, that it is the Land-tax Act which 
raises your revenue ; that it is the annual vote in the committee 
of supply which gives you your army; or that it is the mutiny bill 
which inspires it with bravery and discipline ? No ! Surely no ! 
It is the love of the people ; it is their attachment to their govern- 
ment from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious 
institution, which gives you your army and your navy, and infuses 
into both that liberal obedience without which your army would 

_a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber. 

All this, I know well enough, will sound wild and chimerical 
o the profane herd of those vulgar and mechanical politicians 
who have no place among us : a sort of people w T ho think that 
nothing exists but what is gross and material ; and who, therefore, 
far from being qualified to be directors of the great movement of 
empire, are not fit to turn a wheel in the . machine. But to men 
truly initiated and rightly taught, these ruling and master princi- 
ples which, in the opinion of such men as I have mentioned, have 
no substantial existence, are in truth everything, and all in all. 
Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom ; and a 
great empire and little minds go ill together. If we are conscious 
of our situation, and glow with zeal to fill our place as becomes 
our station and ourselves, we ought to auspicate 1 all our public 
proceedings on America with the old warning of the church, 
Sursum corda J 2 We ought to elevate our minds to the greatness 
of that trust to which the order of Providence has called us. By 
adverting to the dignity of this high calling, our ancestors have 
turned a savage wilderness into a glorious empire; and have made 
the most extensive and the only honorable conquests, not by de- 
stroying, but by promoting the wealth, the number, the happiness 
of the human race. I Let us get an American revenue as we have 
got an American empire. English privileges have made it all 
that it is ; English privileges alone will make it all it can be. 

l Inaugurate. 2 " Lift up your hearts," — a call to prayer. 



WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. «5 

In full confidence of this unalterable truth, I now (quod felix 
faustumque sit) 1 lay the first stone of the temple of peace ; and I 
move you. — 

" That the colonies and plantations of Great Britain in North 
America, consisting of fourteen separate governments, and con- 
taining two millions and upwards of free inhabitants, have not had 
the liberty and privilege of electing and sending any knights and 
burgesses, or others, to represent them in the high court of Par- 
liament." 

Upon this resolution the previous question was put, and carried ; 
for the previous question 270, against it 78. 



As the propositions were opened separately in the body of the 
speech, the reader perhaps may wish to see the whole of them to- 
gether, in the form in which they were moved. 

Mr. Burke's Propositions. 

" That the colonies and plantations of Great Britain in North 
America, consisting of fourteen separate governments, and con- 
taining two millions and upwards of free inhabitants, have not had 
the liberty and privilege of electing and sending any knights and 
burgesses, or others, to represent them in the high court of Par- 
liament. 

" That the said colonies and plantations have been made liable to, 
and bounden by, several subsidies, payments, rates, and taxes, given 
and granted by Parliament ; though the said colonies and planta- 
tions have not their knights and burgesses, in the said high court 
of Parliament, of their own election, to represent the condition of 
their country ; by lack whereof, they have been oftentimes touched 
and grieved by subsidies given, granted, and assented to, in the said 
court, i?i a manner prejudicial to the commonwealth^ quietness, rest, 
and peace of the subjects inhabiting within the same? 

1 " May it be happy and auspicious." 

2 The words in Italics, in this and the last motion, were, by an amendment 
that was carried, left out of the motion. 



86 EDMUND BURKE ON CONCILIATION 

" That, from the distance of the said colonies, and from other 
circumstances, no method hath hitherto been devised for procur- 
ing a representation in Parliament for the said colonies. 

" That each of the said colonies hath within itself a body, chosen, 
in part or in the whole, by the freemen, freeholders, or other free 
inhabitants thereof, commonly called the general assembly, or gen- 
eral court; with powers legally to raise, levy, and assess, accord- 
ing to the several usage of such colonies, duties and taxes towards 
defraying all sorts of public services. 

" That the said general assemblies, general courts, or other 
bodies, legally qualified as aforesaid, have at sundry times freely 
granted several large subsidies and public aids for his Majesty's 
service, according to their abilities, when required thereto by letter 
from one of his Majesty's principal secretaries of state ; and that 
their right to grant the same, and their cheerfulness and sufficiency 
in the said grants, have been at sundry times acknowledged by 
Parliament. 

" That it hath been found by experience, that the manner of 
granting the said supplies and aids, by the said general assemblies, 
hath been more agreeable to the inhabitants of the said colonies, 
and more beneficial and conducive to the public service, than the 
mode of giving and granting aids and subsidies in Parliament to 
be raised and paid in the said colonies. 

" That it may be proper to repeal an act, made in the seventh 
year of the reign of his present Majesty, intituled: An act for 
granting certain duties in the British colonies and plantations in 
America ; for allowing a drawback of the duties of customs, upon 
the exportation from this kingdom, of coffee and cocoanuts of the 
produce of the said colonies or plantations ; for discontinuing the 
drawbacks payable on China earthenware exported to America ; 
and for more effectually preventing the clandestine running of 
goods in the said colonies and plantations. 

. " That it may be proper to repeal an act, made in the fourteenth 
year of the reign of his present Majesty, intituled : An act to discon- 
tinue, in such manner and for such time as are therein mentioned, 
the landing and discharging, lading or shipping of goods, wares, 



WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 87 

and merchandise, at the town, and within the harbor, of Boston, in 
the province of Massachusetts Bay, in North America. 

" That it may be proper to repeal an act, made in the four- 
teenth year of the reign of his present Majesty, intituled: An act 
for the impartial administration of justice, in the cases of persons 
questioned for any acts done by them, in the execution of the 
law, or for the suppression of riots and tumults, in the province of 
Massachusetts Bay, in New England. 

" That it is proper to repeal an act, made in the fourteenth 
year of the reign of his present Majesty, intituled: An act for the 
better regulating the government of the province of Massachu- 
setts Bay, in New England. 

" That it is proper to explain and amend an act made in the 
thirty-fifth year of the reign of King Henry VIII., intituled : An 
act for the trial of treasons committed out of the king's do- 
minions. 

" That, from the time when the general assembly, or general 
court, of any colony or plantation, in North America, shall have 
appointed, by act of assembly duly confirmed, a settled salary to 
the offices of the chief justice and judges of the superior courts, it 
may be proper that the said chief justice and other judges of the 
superior courts of such colony shall hold his and their office and 
offices during their good behavior ; and shall not be removed there- 
from, but when the said removal shall be adjudged by his Maj- 
esty in council, upon a hearing on complaint from the general as- 
sembly, or on a complaint from the governor, or council, or the 
house of representatives, severally, of the colony in which the said 
chief justice and other judges have exercised the said office. 

" That it may be proper to regulate the courts of admiralty, or 
vice-admiralty, authorized by the fifteenth chapter of the fourth 
of George III., in such a manner, as to make the same more com- 
modious to those who sue, or are sued, in the said courts ; and to 
provide for the more decent mai?ite?iance of the judges of the same." 1 

1 The first four motions and the last had the previous question put on them. 
The others were negatived. 



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school classes. 

Copies 0/ any of tke above books, or any of our ptiblications, will be sent, prepaid, 
to any address on receipt of the price by the Publishers : 

American Book Company 

NEW YORK CINCINNATI CHICAGO 

(80) 









School Histories 



BARNES'S SERIES: 

Barnes's Primary History of the United States. By T. F. Donnelly. 

For Intermediate Classes. Fully illustrated 60 cents 

Barnes's Brief History of the United States. Revised to the present 

Administration. Richly embellished with maps and illustrations. $1.00 

ECLECTIC SERIES: 



Eclectic Primary History of the United States. By Edward S. Ellis. 
A book for younger classes, or those who have not the time to devote to a 
more complete History 50 cents 

New Eclectic History of the United States. By M. E. Thalheimer. 
A revised, enlarged, and improved edition of the " Eclectic History of the 
United States." Fully illustrated with engravings, colored plates, etc., $1.00 

EGGLESTON'S SERIES: 



Eggleston's First Book in American History. By Edward Eggles- 
ton. With Special Reference to the Lives and Deeds of Great Americans. 
Beautifully illustrated. A history for beginners on a new plan . 60 cents 

Eggleston's History of the United States and Its People. By Ed- 
ward Eggleston. For the Use of Schools. Fully illustrated with en- 
gravings, maps, and colored plates $1.05 

SWINTON'S SERIES : 



Swinton's First Lessons in Our Country's History. By William 
Swinton. A revised edition of this popular Primary History, 48 cents 

Swinton's School History of the United States. By William 
Swinton. Revised and Enlarged. New features, new maps, new 
illustrations and brought down to the Columbian year . 90 cents 

We also publish several other Histories of the United States for Schools. 
For full list see Descriptive Section No. 7. 



General History 



Appletons' School History of the World. New Edition .... $1.22 

Barnes's Brief General History of the World 1.60 

Fisher's Outlines of Universal History 2.40 

Swinton's Outlines of the World's History 1.44 

Thalheimer's General History i>2 q 

Our list also includes Histories of England, France, Greece, Rome, etc., 

besides Ancient, Mediaeval, and Modern Histories, and Manuals of Mythology. 

. Circulars and Section 7, of our List fully describes these and other works on 

the same subject. They are sent free on rsquest. Special terms for introduction. 

Correspondence invited. 



American Book Company 

New York Cincinnati Chicago Boston Portland, Ore. 

(8) 



Eclectic School Readings 

A new series of fresh and attractive reading books 
designed for Supplementary Reading in schools and for 
home instruction. The books are carefully graded both 
individually and as a series, attractively dressed and 
copiously illustrated. 

The Following Books of the Series are Now Issued 
Stories for Children 

For First Reader Grade. By Mrs. C. A. Lane. 

Linen, i2mo, 104 pages, illustrated. Price 25 cents. 

A choice collection of easy supplementary reading lessons for the 
youngest children at school. 

Fairy Stories and Fables 

For Second Reader Grade. By James Baldwin. 

Linen, 12'mo, 176 pages, illustrated. Price 35 cents. 

The most popular folk-tales and fables retold in an attractive and 
understandable form for young readers. 

Old Greek Stories 

For Third Reader Grade. By James Baldwin. 

Linen, i2mo, 208 pages, illustrated. Price 45 cents. 

Classic stories of ancient Greece told in simple language for young 
readers. 

Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans 

For Second Reader Grade. By Edward Eggleston. 
Linen, i2mo, 159 pages, illustrated. Price 40 cents. 

Stories of American Life and Adventure 

For Third Reader Grade. By Edward Eggleston. 
Linen, i2mo, 214 pages, illustrated. Price 50 cents. 
Reading books designed to interest children in American History. 

Other books of this series are in preparation 

Copies of the Eclectic School Readings will be sent prepaid to any 
address 071 receipt of the price by the Publishers : 

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 

New York ♦ Cincinnati ♦ Chicago 

(is) 



GENERAL HISTORY. 

THALHEIMER'S GENERAL HISTORY. 

iamo. 448 pp. Half roan, illustrated . . . $1.20 

Extreme brevity has here been combined with a lively and simple narrative, 
such as might supply the present need of young pupils while affording a sym- 
metrical plan for the research of older ones. 

SWINTON'S OUTLINES OF HISTORY. 

l2mo, 500 pp. Cloth . . . . . $1.44 

Ancient, Mediaeval and Modern, with special reference to the History of 
Mankind. Its anatomical synopses, its maps showing the political divisions at 
the great epochs, its collateral information, its surveys of the great events, dis- 
tinguished men, and important discoveries furnish in an entertaining style just 
what is valuable to the beginner of the study of history. 

LORD'S POINTS OF HISTORY. 

i2mo, 300 pp. Cloth . . . . , . $1.00 

The salient points in the history of the world arranged catechetically for 
class use or for review and examination by teacher or pupil. 

GILMAN'S FIRST STEPS IN GENERAL HISTORY. 

i8mo, 385 pp. Cloth . . . . . .75 cents 

A suggestive outline of great compactness. Each country is treated by itself, 
and the United States receives special attention. Frequent maps, contempo, 
rary events in tables, references to standard works for fuller details, and a m'u 
nute index constitute the "Illustrative Apparatus." The style is surprisingly 
vivid and at times even ornate. 

FISHER'S OUTLINES OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY. 

8vo, 690 pp. Cloth ...... $2.40 

This work, designed as a text-book and for private reading, is a clear and 
condensed narrative, brought down to the present year, comprising not only a 
record of political events, but also a sketch of the progress of literature, art and 
science from the beginning of history to the present time. 

BARNES'S GENERAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD. 

i2mo, 600 pp. Cloth ...... $1.60 

A complete outline of the world's history. Some of the prominent features 
comprise : blackboard analysis ; summaries to assist in review ; lists of reading 
references ; colored maps ; scenes in real life ; chapters on civilization ; gene- 
alogical tables ; foot-notes ; chapters devoted to the rise of modern nations. 

The pupil insensibly acquires a taste for historical reading and forgets the 
tediousness of the ordinary lesson in perusing the thrilling story of the past. 

APPLETONS' SCHOOL HISTORY OF THE WORLD. 

8vo, 491 pp. Cloth ...... $1.22 

From the earliest ages to the present time. A clear, fresh, carefully arranged 
and condensed work, beautifully illustrated. It treats ancient civilization in 
the light of the most recent discoveries. The whole history of the past con- 
densed into a moderate-sized volume that can be readily mastered in the ordi- 
nary school year. 

Copies 0/ these or any of the publications of the American Book Company for 
the use of teachers or school officers, or for examination with a view to intro- 
duction, will be sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of the list or introduction price. 



*39 



AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY, 

NEW YORK .'. CINCINNATI .'. CHICAGO. 



History — England and France. 

BERARD'S SCHOOL HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

i2mo, 470 pp. Cloth . . . . . . $1.20 

The social life of the English people is felicitously interwoven with the civil 
and military transactions of the country. The nation's religion, literature, 
science, art and commerce occupy a prominent place in the book. 

DICKENS'S CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

i6mo, 308 pp. Half Leather . . . . .60 cents 

Related in a charming narrative style, so that it reads to the child like a 
story. The events are so vividly portrayed, and in so interesting a manner 
that even a child without the desire to learn is led to read on from sheer 
interest. 

LANCASTER'S MANUAL OF ENGLISH HISTORY. 

i2mo, 324 pp. Cloth . . . . . . $1.00 

A brief and practical book. Though short, it is not a bare and uninteresting 
outline, but contains enough of explanation and detail to make intelligible the 
cause and effect of events. Their relations to the history and development of 
the American people are made specially prominent. 

MORRIS'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

i2mo, 533 pp. Cloth ...... $1.00 

In this book the events of each reign, grouped according to their order and 
importance, are placed at the beginning of each chapter, and the outline thus 
given is filled up in detail. A chapter on the social condition of the people 
is given at the end of each period. 

THALHEIMER'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

i2mo, 288 pp. Cloth, illustrated .... $1.00 

A compact volume, comprehensive in scope, but sufficiently brief to be com- 
pleted in one school term. Its statements of historical facts are based upon the 
studies of the most recent and reliable authorities. The maps are superior in 
fullness, accuracy and beauty. 

BARNES'S BRIEF HISTORY OF FRANCE. 

i2mo, 330 pp. Cloth . . . . . . $1.00 

This book is primary in matter and manner of treatment. Especially inter- 
esting are the chapters on manners and customs of the people at different 
periods, and the linking of events by tracing cause and effect. 

YONGE'S HISTORY OF FRANCE. (Primer Series.) 

i8mo, 122 pp. Flexible cloth . . . . .35 cents 

With maps of, France showing the provinces and the departments. A short 
but comprehensive history of France, designed for use in schools where but 
little time is devoted to this subject or as a reference book. Topical head- 
ings are placed at the beginning of the paragraphs. 



Copies of these or any of the publications of the American Book Company for 
the use of teachers or school officers, or for examination with a view to intro- 
duction, will be sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of the list or introduction price. 

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY, 

NEW YORK .-. CINCINNATI .*. CHICAGO. 

[*4°] 






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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



Eclectic English 



ARNOLD'S STHP.AB A" ¥ RUSTU 

BURKE'S SPEECH ON CONCILIAT 

COLERIDGE'S RIME OF THE ANCIL 

DEFOE'S HISTORY OF THE PLAGUEflN LONDON, 

DE QU1NCEYS REVOLT OF THE TARTARS . . 

EMERSON'S AMERICAN SCHOLAR, SELF- 
RELIANCE, COMPENSATION 

GEORGE ELIOT'S SILAS MARKER .... 

GOLDSMITH'S ViCAR bF WAKEFIELD . . . 

IRVINGS .,kLTCH-BOOK— SELECTIONS . . . 

IRVP.CC S TA' !3S OF A TRAVELER ... 

MACAULAY'S SECOND ESSAY ON CHATHAM 

MACAIJLAY'S ESSAY ON MILTON ... 

MACAULAY'S ESSAY ON ADDiSON . . 

MACAULAY'S LIFE OF JOHNSON 

MILTON'S L'ALLEGRO. !L PENSEROSO, COMUS 
LYCIDAS ^/ . ..w . 

MILTON'S PARADISE LOST— Books \ and II . 




011 698 516 



20 
20 

y° 

}5 

20 

, 50 
20 
20 
20 

press 

20 
20 



POPE'S HOMER'S ILIAD— Bo< *s i. Vi, XXII, XXIV, In press 

SCOTT'S IVANHOfi <o 

SCOTT'S MARMION 40 

SCOTT'S LADY OF THE LAKE 

SCOTT'S THE ABBOT 60 

SCOTT'S WOODSTOCK 60 

SHAKESPEARE'S JULIUS C/FSAR 20 

SHAKESPEARE'S "WELFTH NIGHT 30 

SHAKESPEARE'S MbiiCHANT OF VENICE ... 20 
SHAKESPEARE'S MIDSUMME -l-NICHT'S DREAM . 20 

SHAKESPEARE'S AS YOU LIKE i I* 20 

SHAKESPEARE'S MACBETH 20 

SHAKESPEARE'S HAMLET . . . in press 

SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY PAPERS-(The Spectator) 20 

SOUTHEY'S LIFE OF NELSON In press 

TENNYSON'S PRINCESS In press 

WEBSTER'S BUNKER HILL ORATIONS .... 20 



^ 



Copies of the Eclectic English Classics -will be sent, /repaid, to any 
address on receipt of the price by the Publishers : 

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 
New Ycrk ♦ Cincinnati ♦ Chicago 






